Spring Creek Chapter had the honor of awarding member, Marianne Deadmon, the Historic Preservation Committee Certificate and medal for Excellence in Historic Preservation at their September 9th meeting.
Mrs. Deadmon is 91 and ½-years-old, and she has been a DAR member since July of 2010. She has spent much of her adult life working on historic preservation projects. She has spent more than 25 years working to preserve the history of her hometown, Eldorado, Oklahoma. Her genealogical efforts have centered on the Eldorado community and the many people who have been touched by that community.
Her efforts include building a database of Eldorado residents that currently has over 45,000 individuals in it. She transcribed obituaries from the local newspaper, The Eldorado Courier, for the years 1904-2011, resulting in almost 6000 obituaries in over 60 binders.
Mrs. Deadmon led the effort to walk through the Eldorado Cemetery, gathering information from the grave markers. She also accessed the burial records at City Hall, as well as funeral home records. She searched the marriage records for Jackson County and surrounding counties. She compiled the data into a book of burials in the Eldorado Cemetery, including parents, spouses, burial location (and a map!). With extensive input from the community and families of those buried in Eldorado, the book was revised two years later, adding 40 more pages of burials. All entries were indexed. All burials (2500+) have been added to Find-a-Grave, providing access to those family members who are unable to travel to Eldorado. Under Mrs. Deadmon’s leadership, all grave markers have been photographed and the photo uploaded to the Find-a-Grave website.
Mrs. Deadmon led the efforts to photograph all the homes in Eldorado. She began gathering oral histories from folks, including some in-person gatherings at the local community center. Using large index cards, she printed a picture of each home, the address, and what information she had on the home (mainly who had lived in the house). With some prompting, folks began putting their notes on the cards. The information was then added to the file for each house, printed, and put into binders. These are at the community center for folks to add notes to them or reminisce.
Given a large trash bag of funeral flyers and folders by City Hall, Mrs. Deadmon organized the materials by year, along with an index. The 25+ binders are kept at Eldorado City Hall for easy access by folks doing research.
Spring Creek Chapter is honored to recognize the lifelong work of Marianne Deadmon in the field of Historical Preservation. The Spring Creek Chapter in The Woodlands was chartered in 1983, and they meet the second Thursday of the month. To learn more, contact the chapter at springcreekchapterregistrar@gmail.com
