I've been playing the 1955 American Aerial County History Series from Hancock County, Illinois, Mocavo.com. There's not just farm pictures in this publication, rural churches appear as well. Of personal interest was the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church as shown below. By 1955, my own family had stopped attending this church, although my grandparents lived on a farm close enough to the church that the church could easily be seen from the front yard.
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| page 265 of original text |
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Of course, no stones are readable.
Having been to the cemetery numerous times, I am somewhat familiar with it. The rectangular region on the left is virtually full and the trees that line the "back" of the cemetery (on the left, which would be the east side) are now gone. The trees on the north (in the back) are still there.
I'm reasonably certain that I've located the stone of my great-great-grandparents on the image below. My great-grandparents were not deceased in 1955, but they are buried pretty close to where the "S" appears in "Stone" below.
These images were located on Mocavo.com's digital version of this publication by searching for Immanuel as a keyword. That's why "Immanuel" is in yellow in the screen shots above.
I know these books were published for other Illinois counties, but I'm not certain which ones Mocavo.com has. But those with an interest in this time period might want to give a look on Mocavo.com and see for themselves.
Neat stuff.
[note: The black and white portions of these images were downloaded from the Mocavo.com site. The title of the database and the image numbers were retained in order to facilitate the relocation of these images. The red annotations were made by Michael John Neill on 20 February 2014--the same date as the viewing date of the images]