To Life!

Elizabeth Applebaum

Contributing Editor

Ann Arbor

S

ome of Lawrence
Kestenbaum's most
valuable research mate-
rial can be found propping up
teetering couch legs at used fur-
niture stores.
They're called Michigan
Manuals. Published every other
year since the Civil War, the
journals are filled with forgotten
secrets of history: the final rest-
ing place of a one-term senator
from Kalamazoo, the birth date of
Detroit's mayor in 1856, the organi-
zational affiliations of an Oakland
County judge who died years ago.
Kestenbaum, 50, of Ann Arbor,
has been collecting the manu-
als since he was in high school.
Today, they prove an invaluable
resource for his Web site: politi-
calgraveyard.com, which offers
life-and-death tidbits about
American politicians.
Politicalgraveyard.com
answers your questions about:
• How many politicians were
Jewish?
• How many died in duels?
• In what cemetery are the
most Supreme Court justices
buried?
And so much more, because
Kestenbaum is not only an
expert on politicians and
graveyards, he likes (and often
provides links to) such eclectic
items as elevators and octagonal
houses, Nigerian e-mail fraud,
ethnic food, postal workers, ugly
buildings, folk music, Yiddish,
science fiction, botany, contra
dancing, writers and thinkers he
admires (including Elie Wiesel,
Jane Jacobs, Oliver Sacks) and
those "whose work I generally
deplore and oppose" (among
them: Christopher Hitchens,
Rush Limbaugh, Antonin Scalia).
When not considering graves
and elevators, Kestenbaum is
Washtenaw county clerk and
register of deeds, a position to
which he was elected in 2004. He
began politicalgraveyard.com 10
years ago, "when the World Wide
Web was still new, and I was very
skeptical of it."
But he recognized an oppor-
tunity to speak to his grave
concern about the terrible state

for their county on the Internet,"
he says. "I got a lot of requests
like, 'How do I get a fishing
license?' And one time all the e-
mail said was, 'Your sheriff is an
SOB."
Kestenbaum decided to change
the format of the site.
Genealogy, meanwhile, quickly
was becoming the topic of the
day. "This brought a lot of traf-
fic to my site," Kestenbaum says.
Visitors came looking forinfor-
mation to confirm family stories
about famous, and infamous,
political ancestors, and genealo-
gists themselves provided useful
information for the site.
Then came Google, which
placed Kestenbaum's Web
address at the top of its search
list for a number of words, and
which offered the valuable link
tool. (Go to any number of sites
about presidential biographies or
famous cemeteries or politicians
of Scottish descent, for example,
and it would take you directly to
the Political Graveyard.)
These days, Kestenbaum
sees 4 to 5 million hits a month
— with Sunday providing the
highest traffic and Saturday the
least — at the Graveyard. "Those
numbers surprise me," he admits.
Since redesigning his site,
Kestenbaum has received fewer
E
requests for fishing licenses, but
mail still pours in. Among the
most popular topics: R. Budd
Dwyer, the former state treasurer
of Pennsylvania who shot him-
in the Washington Post.
self on camera in 1987; William
Initially, Kestenbaum listed
Dudley Pelley, founder of the
only basic political biographies,
American (Nazi) Silvershirts;
plus the names of cemeteries
and John F. Kennedy, about
where the men and women lie
whom Kestenbaum
buried. Then he
initially said he was
Larry Kestenbaum's
began considering
"apparently" shot by
how many politicians Web site on dead
Lee Harvey Oswald,
politicians offers
(many more than
just to keep the
Alexander Hamilton) links to everything
conspiracy theorists
from elevators to
had died in duels,
quiet.
Yiddish.
how many had died
Kestenbaum's
in wars, how many
complete collection
were murdered, how
of political (and other) informa-
many were born in Detroit, or
tion comprises more than 10,000
Chicago, or Columbia, Mo. Facts
pages — for now But because U.S.
were organized by state, and
politicians are being elected and
finally he concluded that each
die every day, or new information
state deserved its own Web page.
comes to light on where they are
Then he expanded to a page for
buried
or revealing some odd fact
every county, which led to some
about
their
life, the Web site "is
interesting correspondence.
always
being
updated," he says.
"I would get e-mail from
"It's
a
constant
work in prog-
people around the country who
ress.
It
will
never
be
complete."
thought this was the only page

Larry Kestenbaum of Ann Arbor digs up the
facts on dead American politicians.

of so many historical cem-
eteries throughout the country.
Plus, "in Congress there was
a sort of spiteful budget cut-
ting" that eliminated care of
the Congressional Cemetery
in Washington, D.C., the final
resting place of many former
congressmen and home to his-
toric markers, including one in
memory of a 10-year-old girl, the
city's first traffic fatality.
"Congress just abandoned it,"
Kestenbaum laments. "It was
covered with weeds, graffiti was
everywhere, and the statues were
being destroyed by vandals."

Preserving History
Kestenbaum decided to create a
Web site to mark the importance
of these cemeteries, including a
database that would allow any-
one to find where famous politi-
cians are buried.

His first resource was the
Biographical Directory of the
American Congress, a thick col-
lection offering brief biogra-
phies of everyone who had ever
served in Congress. The more
famous were listed, of course,
"but also some really obscure
people who only served one
term," Kestenbaum says. When
he first saw the book in college
he knew he had found a treasure.
"I thought: You could make some
interesting statistics with this:'
He also collected, often buying
on eBay, legislative manuals from
states around the country.
As he considered the Web site,
he knew "it would amuse people
I knew in grad school." But he
could never have imagined how
popular politicalgraveyard.com ,
which debuted July 1, 1996,
would become. In short time, the
site was mentioned on CNN and

❑

June 8 • 2006

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