After copying down the names of the 15 other pioneers buried in the same plat as Jacobsen, Smith used an LDS family search site and attempted to contact the ancestors of the families buried in the plat. The four families she reached joined Smith in her effort to place headstones on the graves.

In addition to Jacobsen's, the other headstones included: Donald McKinnon and Albert Vincent. One headstone for Ann Hudson and her last husband John Reid was added as was another for Hudson's first husband, John Richardson.

It took over a year of research and phone calls, but through donations from the various families, enough money was raised for the five headstones, and a dedication ceremony was held July 16.

"With them being pioneers, I wanted to do it as close to Pioneer Day as possible to celebrate them," Smith said. "I figured it would be a great celebration for her to know she's being recognized. It's to commemorate them coming across the plains. They suffered a lot."

Kuhns credits smart Web page design as the link between himself and Smith. The Web has opened a whole new medium for genealogy research, Kuhns said. And, with the right Web site, families can easily get in touch through a mere Google search.

"I don't think people have realized what a powerful tool it can be," he said.

Kuhns is the marketing director for a genealogy storage site, has been doing genealogy for about 25 years, and speaks to family history groups on the use of Web sites for genealogy research. "If you build it, people will come to you."

There are important tricks genealogists can utilize on their Web page so it will get more "hits" or visitors to their site. Kuhns said a genealogy page's traffic increases when some fundamentals are included, such as contact information, a detailed title rather than a generic one like "Our Genealogy Page," and links for additional information instead of putting all the family history on one page.

"It's no longer genealogy, which is number, dates and statistics. It is family history, which is old stories and pictures," he said.

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E-mail: astowell@desnews.com