About the Author & this Website
About me
I was born and raised in Columbia, Missouri. After graduating
from college, I relocated to desert area of Southern California. My
personal life keeps me busy: I work full-time as a retail
manager, have a wife and four children, and am an active member
of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints (Mormon). Therefore, I enjoy genealogy during leisure
times--which fluctuates between a some and none
mostly depending on the work responsibilities.
My Daviess County heritage
My interest in Daviess County genealogy stems from my paternal
grandfather whose parents were both native to Daviess County. My
great-grandfather was Dudley Alver REID, a one-time Winston
Sentinel newspaper publisher/editor and his wife Josephine
TARWATER, who was in full meaning the other half of the family
business. Through these lines, I can establish relationship to
most any REID (not REED) or TARWATER in Daviess County. Related
names are numerous including MILLER, McHANEY, WORLEY, BIDDLE, and others pretty
much all having resided on the southern half of the Grand River
in Daviess County.
To clarify for Daviess County historians familiar with the 1838
Daviess County Early Settler/Mormon Conflict: my Mormon ancestry
comes from my maternal line and does not include any Daviess
County experience; however, my TARWATERs were among the early
settlers of Daviess County--although it is undocumented what role
they played in this conflict. I am comfortable and fairly
competent in fielding questions on this piece of Daviess County
history.
Sending me stuff
I am always grateful for items regarding Daviess County
cemeteries. However, please make sure that you own the copyright
for the items that you send me (i.e. you made the transcription,
you took the pictures, etc.)
A historical summary of this website
This website started out as a simple, incomplete list of
cemeteries on the MoGenWeb's Daviess County homepage three years
ago in Aug 1998. The list grew and Lori Pownall, the former ~modavies
hostess, graciously did the HTML work while I kept at the list. I
soon perceived the need to disseminate more information more
efficiently. Thus when rootsweb.com made an announcement to provide free, unlimited webspace I took advantage of the
offer and on October 28, 1999, began a primitive form of this
website. The website is under fairly continual metamorphosis and
has a slow, but slightly expanding outreach: during the first year it had over
2300 hits to the main page alone, the second it added another 2700, and so
forth.
About this website...
I have a three-fold mission for this website: 1) To disseminate
as much Daviess County cemetery information as possible to as
many interested persons; 2) To encourage visits to these
cemeteries; 3) To promote interest in maintaining and restoring
these cemeteries. To the extent these are accomplished will
depend heavily on what kind of feedback I get from you. Thanks to
rootsweb, this has a free spot on the internet so I don't see it
going away. In addition to thanking rootsweb, I wish to thank the
several who have contributed items to the Cemetery List and the
many others for positive feedback & encouragement.
--Steve Reid
April, 2004
Contact me: | Steve Reid |