Projects

Besides conducting research on his own family, Brian Hass has also spent much of his free time working on a number of genealogical spin-off projects. These projects have involved the compiling of databases from various sources and the publishing of this data on the web for use by other researchers. The data within these databases is regional in nature and will be of use to anyone who has ancestors who once lived in the area of Beresford, South Dakota.

A special thanks goes to Rootsweb, the US GenWeb Project, and Internment.net for archiving this data on the world wide web.

Cemetery Surveys

A number of cemeteries in the area of Beresford, South Dakota were visited by Brian Hass for the purpose of transcribing genealogical data from the grave marker inscriptions. Whenever possible, additional data on unmarked graves was obtained from available burial records.

Data from the grave marker inscriptions was checked against the burial records. If any data from the grave marker transcriptions did not match the data listed in the burial records, the relevant cemeteries and grave markers were revisited to check for possible transcription errors. If any of the data inscribed on the grave markers did not match that listed within the burial records, the grave marker inscription data was given preference. Every effort was made to insure that the transcriptions were as accurate as possible.

The purpose of compiling these trascriptions was to make the grave marker inscription data available to researchers who were unable to be physically visit the cemeteries. Whenever grave markers were present, the transcribed data was limited to what was originally inscribed on the grave markers and was not embellished with data from other sources, such as obituaries. Any important additional data was recorded in the notes field at the end of the grave records but was kept separate from the main data fields for those records. The reason for doing this was to allow researchers to see what was originally inscribed on the grave stones and to allow them to make their own interpretations of the inscribed data.

If a grave had no marker, all data was then taken from available records. If the specific grave site was checked (and no marker was found), the notes field for that grave listed it as an "unmarked grave." For any other unmarked grave, the notes field listed it as "probably unmarked" if the specific site was not checked (but no marker was recorded for that grave during the survey of the entire cemetery). In cases of "probably unmarked" graves, markers (or inscriptions on shared markers) might have been missed during the survey; but in most of those cases, the graves were probably not marked.

Cemetery records submitted by Brian Hass to Interment.net

County	Cemeteries
Clay County, SD	St. Peter's Cemetery
Lincoln County, SD	Larsen Cemetery Old Romsdal Cemetery Pioneer Cemetery Nazareth Cemetery Romsdal Cemetery
Union County, SD	Beresford Cemetery Beresford Memorial Park Gothland Cemetery Saint John Cemetery Saint Mary Cemetery Steadman Cemetery

Obituary Indexes

Indexes have been compiled for obituaries published in a number of periodicals. The indexes were published on the web as a part of the US GenWeb's Obituaries Project.

South Dakota

Union County

• Beresford News: A small number of obituaries published in the Beresford News were indexed. However, this paper and the Beresford Republic frequently published obituaries for the same individuals during the time period when both papers were in existence; and, the Beresford News obituaries for those individuals can usually be found by looking up their names in the index of obituaries published in the Beresford Republic. However, each paper's obituary for a given individual was often different; and in a few cases, the listed dates of birth and/or death sometimes varied slightly. In a few other cases, data included in one obituary for a given individual was occasionally omitted from the alternate obituary.
• Beresford Republic: Nearly fifty percent of all of the obituaries ever published in the Beresford Republic have been indexed, with each index representing the obituaries that were published during a given calendar year.

Minnehaha County

• Sioux Falls Shopping News: This publication first obituary column appeared its June 20, 2001 issue; and, the earliest obituaries were indexed. Each index represents obituaries that were published during a three month period and was labeled according to the season with which the time period roughly coincides.

Pennington County

• The Hardrock: Roughly a decade's worth of obituaries from this SDSM&T alumni publication were indexed, with each index representing the obituaries that were published during two calendar years.

Alumni Databases

A database of early graduates of Beresford High School was compiled by Brian Hass. This can be found in the User Databases at Rootsweb.