Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flandreau Cemetery

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to New Rochelle, New York. MBisanz ^talk 05:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Flandreau Cemetery[edit]

Small family graveyard with no evidence or indication of notability (for example, nobody notable seems to be buried there). Sources are mostly genealogical websites. I tagged this article as an orphan lacking any indication of notability in October 2008; the templates were removed, but the problems were not addressed; I see no point in allowing the article proponents any more time to establish notability. Orlady (talk) 01:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment--lots of things have inherent notability (and the older, the more so). How does that affect graveyards? Is there some sort of automatic notability for cemeteries? Drmies (talk) 01:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I think that Drmies' question is a good one, and if an affirmative answer is forthcoming, I am prepared to change my position. I must say that I am sympathetic to the possibility that this cemetery's interred may possess notability in and of themselves, but really, without first establishing their notability, I think that the notability of the land they currently occupy is even less established. Un school 02:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. —Orlady (talk) 04:12, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Clear keep or merge no reason to lose this information from the encyclopedia. ChildofMidnight (talk) 08:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - The content of the present article could well be original research, based on someone visiting the cemetery and reading the gravestones. No members of the Flandreau family have their own WP articles at this moment. If one of them were to acquire an article, it might be justifiable to cite the NYT article from there. There is nothing reliable from which we could write an article on the *cemetery* except the NYT article itself. Conceivably the larger Beechwood Cemetery could deserve an article at some point if sources were found, and the NYT article on the Flandreau cemetery could be cited from there, since the article mentions Beechwood. EdJohnston (talk) 14:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The NY Times article that has been added to the article as a source does not alter (and in fact strengthens) my opinion that the cemetery is not notable. The article (from 1981, apparently only in a local edition of the paper) indicates that the cemetery was abandoned and all-but-forgotten; most of the burials had been relocated; the site was used as a dump before it became a play area for the neighbor's kids; and no one was willing to maintain it. The focus of the article is not on any particular significance of the cemetery, but on practical and legal quandaries associated with trying to figure out who is responsible for the property. --Orlady (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I haven't yet voted, but I'll do so now, after having done a little bit of work to the article (and thanks also to Orlady and ChildofMidnight for their help). I do believe that cemeteries have a kind of automatic notability, esp. if they're more than 200 years old--whether overgrown or not. Also, this was one of the leading families in the area, though without Wikipedia articles, but we all know that it's easier to fill an internet-generated bibliography on an American Idol candidate than on an entire family that came here even before the Revolution. That is, I have no doubt that a local enthusiast can fill in those blanks, the blanks of the graves and bodies that were once there; in the meantime, we should keep this and its history. Drmies (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This is more suitable for a local genealogical webpage or Ancestry.com than for an encyclopedia. Fails WP:N. Thre is no inherent notability for a small piece of ground where a few non-notable people were buried over a hundred year period. I have visited several cemetaries where my own ancestors are buried which are equally non-notable. Edison (talk) 00:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amen! I, too, have visited several utterly non-notable cemeteries -- all larger and better maintained this one, and some older than this one -- that contain graves of my ancestors. --Orlady (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into New Rochelle, New York. Spinach Monster (talk) 01:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I was just about to note that there is no reason to delete this page and its history. It can be mentioned as appropriate in the New Rochelle, New York article which has a section on the 17th century and the Hugenots and that historyu ties in with this cemetery and this family. As Drmies points out, this is also a useful catalog of semi-notable persons from this family who were in the United States a very long time ago ago during a formative period and played a fairly prominent role in their community and were part of significant historical movements. This type of information is not only interesting, but useful to researchers and historians. It would be a terrible pity to lose it all together from this encyclopedia. At the very least a redirect would preserve the history in case more sources are located to establish independent notability. As it is I think there's plenty. ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very slim thread that you are trying to hang a connection on. The Huguenots arrived in the late 17th century and this cemetery was used in the 19th century -- more than 100 years (and several generations) later. Yes, the 25 or 30 people who got buried in this cemetery over a 92-year period were Huguenot descendants, but so were many other residents of New Rochelle. This is a non-notable family cemetery. --Orlady (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That I ever would start begging at an AfD, me, a hardcore deletionist...what is this world coming to? But let it live! There is interest outside, considering the recent activity (referenced in the article) to cleanup efforts (see this, a message which generated some response and activity). The cemetery itself is almost dead, but burying it here would deprive a lot of people of a central place of information. Sure, these were not the founding fathers. Sure, it's a century after the first Flandro/Flandreau/Flanders got to New Rochelle. That doesn't alter the fact that it was there, and was important to a lot of people, and still is to some. So this article grew slowly, and wasn't immediately improved upon after Orlady tagged it--but there are no time limits here, and WP is not paper. It is entirely conceivable that over the years this article will grow--and even if it never approaches Arlington Cemetery, so what? And if it's to be deleted let me at least keep a copy, so the descendants and the community activists have something they can keep working on or with. Drmies (talk) 16:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about the problem that most of the current contents of the article are original research? (The long list of graves). Many items are sourced to genealogies or family newsletters. Are you willing to have the article trimmed to just what is documented in the New York Times piece? If not, are you proposing that this article should be exempt from the usual WP:Reliable source rules? EdJohnston (talk) 17:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think I would ask for some leeway here. Lots of references in WP articles are made to websites and newsgroups; some of those are better (stronger) than others. The NYT article establishes a bit of notability, IMO, though I'd love to see more; the other references in the article are weaker, I gladly admit, and are there to attest to the graves, or the persons occupying them. Now, as for original research, it's not MY original research! Does that help? And again, I'll grant you that the sources there are not as strong as I'd like. Some have five stones remaining, others eight, etc. But again, it is perfectly conceivable that work will be done in that area, perhaps even by the city of New Rochelle, and what I ask is that in the meantime the article be allowed to stand. If it is trimmed down, sure, that's better than nothing; if it is merged in its entirety before it is trimmed, sure; as long as the history remains, because this article, weak as it is, was difficult to put together with these admittedly not-so-strong sources. Drmies (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - WP:OTHERSTUFF notwithstanding, I thought it interesting to investigate the assertions of notability in some other cemetery articles. Most of the 41 non-NYC cemeteries listed in Category:Cemeteries in New York (this is the batch that I checked) are burial sites of notable people (that is, at least one person with a Wikipedia article is buried there) and/or are National Cemeteries and/or are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The exceptions are Flandreau Cemetery, Fairview Cemetery (Amsterdam, New York), and two that claim notability solely on the basis of reports of paranormal activity: Goodleburg Cemetery and Forest Park Cemetery, Brunswick. (There are other cemetery articles that are mostly about alleged ghost sightings, but they have some other claim to notability.) --Orlady (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.