Members of the Behling Kutchera American Legion Post 296 arrive for a Memorial Day ceremony honoring Hatch and all veterans. David Barquist doesn't find cemeteries in the least bit spooky. To him, they are more like outdoor museums that showcase Waukesha County's history. Culturally, cemeteries have become much more than places where communities bury their dead. They provide links to important figures and events in community history, and at least one cemetery in the county is ecologically significant.
Cemeteries are records of who have lived here in the past.
We are looking for that stability. The Waukesha County Historical Society gets many requests each week from people all over the United States who are searching for their ancestors. Baker expects genealogy-related requests to continue increasing. Barquist, of Oconomowoc Lake, says he first became interested in cemeteries when his late wife, Barbara, and he decided to search for their ancestors. What started out as a family project, quickly expanded to recording the tombstone information at Summit Cemetery in Summit and cross-referencing it with cemetery burial records.