A good source for Osceola County rabbits

This fine Sunday morning has us hopping down to Osceola County Memory Gardens at 1717 Old Boggy Creek Road in Kissimmee.

This is not an old cemetery.

It's one of those boring new ones where they don't let you place upright gravemarkers, because it makes it easier to mow or some such nonsense.

The result is a distinct lack of character, but that's just me editorializing again . . .

I don't know when exactly this place was founded and I didn't do a thorough search of all the grave markers, but I didn't find many that predated 1970. Most, in fact, are quite recent. As noted in yesterday's post, this is one of the most active burial sites in this neck of the woods.
The oldest one that caught my eye belonged to a US Marine named Charles Gail Batton (1924-1964)--and it was not too far from a US Airman named Merle G. Batton (1919-1968).

I wondered if these two servicemen might have been brothers.

So, when I got back to the old rabbit den, I did a little searching on the internet.

I never succeeded in connecting these two Battons, but did stumble across a great website for any of you with roots in Osceola County:

http://archives.aroundosceola.com/

Searching for "BATTON," I came across two obituaries:
- Mrs. Josepine I. "Josie" Battton (1995)
- Annabelle Batton Stinebaugh (2000)

Unfortunately, neither yielded any clues for this particular case . . .

Distribution of graveyards

Well, rabbits, this week yours truly conducted a very unscientific survey to determine which were the most active graveyards in this little corner of heaven.

I say "unscientific," because all I did was keep a tally while reading the obit page of the Orlando Sentinel for seven straight days--a total of 94 entries.

Here are the results with commentary:

51% of obituaries made no mention of a final resting place at all. I can only assume that this includes the increasingly large number of cremations, as well as families who simply want their privacy.

20% were either out of the area (particularly at the national cemetery in Bushnell) or out of state entirely. This definitely reflects the transient nature of Central Florida's population. Very few of us are actual natives.

That left only 29%, distributed as follows:

8 at Woodlawn in Gotha--hands-down the "winner" in the busiest graveyard category.

4 at Osceola Memory Gardens down in Kissimmee.

2 each at Greenwood-Orlando, Glen Haven Memorial Park, and Winter Garden.

1 each at Chapel Hill, Congregation of Reform Judaism (never heard of this one before!), Edgewood-Apopka, Ocoee, Palm, Pineywood, San Pedro Catholic in Winter Park (also never heard of this one before!), Temple Israel in Gotha (is this new, too?), and Washington Park.