Washington’s “Cemetery Lady” dies at 84
From time to time at Washington Our Home, I like to invite a guest blogger to write something about a topic special to the author. This post comes from Jamison Murphy, a fellow history buff who also happens to work at the Washington State Archives. He shared this story recently, and I knew it needed to be given a larger audience. I hope you enjoy as much as I did!
by Jamison Murphy
I was driving the Archives’ van up Boulevard Road in Olympia to return a rented fan we needed for a special project inside a very hot warehouse, which was housing more employees in June than the last ten years combined.
Traffic came to a halt at a construction site where the street was down to one lane. The long line of cars in which I sat was waiting for the long line on the other side to pass at an impossibly sluggish pace. I put the van in park to put up for a few minutes. I let my mind drift a little bit when I read the bumper sticker on the Subaru in front of me. It said “Fairmount…” something-or-other.
I know that name, I thought to myself. That name is shared by several cemeteries in Spokane. I know that because of Maggie Rail.
Courtesy Legacy.com
Maggie Rail. Hmm, I haven’t heard from Maggie Rail in an unusually long while. Typically, Maggie writes at least once a month — either with new data, corrections to old data, or to point out she sent data that hasn’t gone live on the Digital Archives yet.
I got to thinking about her work, and tried to wrap my head around the inconceivable amount of time she spent reading cemeteries. Maggie Rail was the self-proclaimed “Cemetery Lady.” She went through cemeteries all over Eastern Washington to transcribe headstones, posted her data on her website, and submitted it to the Washington State Archives’ Digital Archives. Her work makes up the bulk of recorded cemetery metadata on the Digital Archives.
I knew she suffered a massive heart attack last year, but judging by her recent, feisty e-mails, I figured she was back to her old self. I surmised if it’s been this long since she’s written to me, some morning soon I would be met by a barrage of new headstone inscriptions to add to the Digital Archives.
But, no, something wasn’t right. It was a hunch. I slid my cell phone out of my pocket, opened my browser, and typed in “Maggie Rail Spokane.” The first result was from legacy.com. The headline read, “Margaret Rail Obituary – Spokane, WA | Spokesman-Review.”
Maggie Rail passed away on April 26, 2018. Her obituary did not specify a cause of death, but to the surprise of no one, it did emphasize her love for cemetery reading.
Upon returning to the Olympia Archives Building, I shared the news with my friend. She was in such disbelief she rigorously pored over the obituary to make sure I had the correct 84-year-old Margaret Irene Rail from Spokane. Yup, it was her.
The decades of Maggie’s cemetery reading have come to an end, but her dedication and attention to detail will live on forever, and her work will be safe in the Archives. Archivists and genealogists all over have expressed their sincere gratitude for her amazing contributions to archival and family research. Cemetery reading is not an easy task. Maggie got her start in cemetery reading in her mid-sixties when she met Bud Engelhart who had completed a few cemeteries himself, according to a 2000 interview from internment.net, a site for which Maggie was the editor. At first, she exclaimed, “There is no way you will see me out in a cemetery doing that,” then she would go on to do exactly that for about 20 years.
Some years ago, Maggie entered her own headstone information into the Digital Archives, of course, without a date of death. Her final contribution to the Digital Archives was made in June when I updated her record to reflect Maggie’s passing date.
The Seattle Times did a nice write up about Maggie in 2012 — you can read that here. And you can read her entire obituary here.
From the entire archives and genealogy communities: Maggie Rail will be greatly missed.
Wonderful tribute!