PERKINS TWP.

Gary Chetwood, director of public affairs for Ohio Veterans Home, sits among the tombstones in the OVH cemetery. Chetwood is leading a project to put photos of each of the cemetery's tombstones on the World Wide Web for the use of genealogists and family historians. Register photo/TIM FLECK

To the casual observer, the stones hold a random array of names, dates and ranks.

But to those looking for their lineage, the stones represent a snippet of their past.

Soon, curious family members from around the world will be able to trace their family history with ease, as the Ohio Veterans Home undertakes a daunting project:

Putting images of its 4,200 tombstones online.

Since March, OVH has received more than 100 requests for pictures of family members' tombstones.

"I don't know how many people we've had who ask, 'Can we get a copy of his headstone? And can you e-mail it to us?'" said Gary Chetwood, public affairs director for the home. "It got to a point where it just occupied too much of our time."

OVH already had a popular Web site that got an average of 60,000 hits per month. It already had a page devoted to the cemetery, with listings of everyone buried there.

Chetwood realized putting the tombstones online would be a relatively simple task. Simple, but tedious. With so many tombstones and only two resident volunteers taking pictures, it could take many months before the project is complete. The Web site will be updated weekly with a new batch of photos.

Local genealogists are enthusiastic about the idea.

Ron Menz, a resident employee at OVH, will take photographs of the tombstones for the Web site. Register photo/TIM FLECK

"I'd just be like a pig in a new puddle that I had found that information, that I had made that new connection and that some organization had taken the time to put that information online for me," said Patty Pascoe, a prominent Erie County genealogist living in Perkins Township.

The online cemetery will save people travel time who would otherwise visit OVH in person, she said. Most cemeteries do not put their tombstones online, but Pascoe hopes it will become more common in the coming years.

Katharyn Wunderley, a former genealogist living in Sandusky, thinks it's an excellent idea.

"People do -- if their loved one has a headstone -- many times want it, and it would be an advantage if it were on Internet, where all they'd have to do is run a copy of that right off their computer," she said. "I think it's an outstanding idea, really."

Many times, you can figure out which war a veteran fought in by the shape of his tombstone, she said.

According to Robert LaPrad, executive director of the Ohio Genealogical Society, tombstones can be helpful in determining dates of birth and death. The Web site will offer a place to start for people who are looking for birth or death certificates.

"For people that are searching for their ancestors, it would be of tremendous value to them," he said.

But some people might be concerned about privacy issues, he said. Not everyone will want their relative's tombstone online for the world to see.

Chetwood has that covered -- he plans to include a link on the Web site letting family members opt out.

Besides family members, Chetwood thinks general visitors will enjoy browsing old tombstones online.

"Some people will look at it and say this is really macabre, to want to look at tombstones," Chetwood said.

"But I challenge anybody, when they go to the cemetery to pay their respects, to not go out and look at the other tombstones and the dates they died. That's just curiosity."

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