Today's post will be a bit of a departure for the CFGYR, because we won't be visiting any particular cemetery.Rather, the statistician in yours truly thought he'd share a very unscientific study he undertook using the local obit pages.
We've pretty much always had a transient population in this little corner of heaven.
I don't mean we're a region of ramblers, per se. But very few folks buried around these parts were actually born here. I wondered just what portion of the current graveyard populations were natives, and where all the other folks came from. So, over a period of 30 days, I kept a tally sheet.
342 obituaries later, I give to you this map as a graphic representation of the results. (If your eyes are as feeble as my own, you may need to double click and expand its size.)
In a nutshell, only 35 folks were actually born in the Sunshine State . . . just over 10%.
A whopping 125 made no reference to a birthplace at all! (about 39%)
78 came from Midwestern states (23%).
36 came from southern states other than Florida (about 11%)
Pennsylvania accounted for 19, the largest number of any state besides Florida. (about 6%)
The next step of this little project will be to get a hold of some old copies of the Orlando Sentinel to see how these ratios have changed over time . . .
OK, enough of the number crunching for now. We'll get back to cemetery hopping in tomorrow's post!
2 comments:
W - I love this idea. Would you mind if I adapt it to some of the little towns here in Texas? Interesting statistics.
My husband's maternal grandmother is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando. She moved to Orlando around 1946 from the Knoxville area of Tennessee. Another statistic!
Please, I would enjoy seeing your results!
Let me know if you'd like a digipic of his grandmother's marker. My office is just around the corner from Greenwood.
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