I have fond memories of what members of my family referred to affectionately as "Mom's graveyarding". Lura B. Emery was my mother.

When copying family Bible records and tombstone inscriptions in pioneer cemeteries became a continuing project of National Daughters of the American Revolution, Bloomington Chapter members participated whole heartedly. Mother was assigned Clear Creek Township. She also copied several in Perry Township.

She didn't let the fact that she could no longer drive because of a heart problem deter her in the least. All family members were enlisted except my railroader father, who never learned to drive an automobile. I was privileged to help copy some inscriptions in 1937 and at various other times, when I would happen to be home for a visit. My husband, on leave from the Navy, didn't escape either.

We would set off dressed in old clothes, stout shoes and armed with a pad of ruled paper, pencils, an Index of Cemeteries by Townships and a section map showing approximate location of cemeteries (from the Monroe County Surveyor's office), chalk (to make the sometimes very worn inscriptions more legible) and a stout stick (in case we encountered a snake or needed to turn a face-down tombstone). I can attest that briars, burrs, sticker weeds, poison ivy, chiggers and spiders abound in abandoned farm burial places. Getting between the strands of a barbed wire fence unscathed is not easy.

Once, we came across a thicket of ripe paw paws. We had nothing in which to carry them. My resourceful little mother, however, just picked up her dress in front and filled it with the lucious fruit. We had just about made it back to the car when the owner of the farm happened along the road and stopped to visit. Mother just sat down on the bank and enjoyed the chat, hoping that he didn't notice her petticoat showing. The farmer said that we were welcome to all of the crop of paw paws (sometimes called "Indiana bananas"). Nobody at his house liked them.

We took Mother far and wide hunting bible records to copy. Her efforts and those of other dedicated D.A.R. members continue to make it possible for prospective members to prove their ancestry.