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Type of site | Political |
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| Available in | English |
| Owner | Lawrence Kestenbaum |
| URL | politicalgraveyard |
| Launched | 1996 |
The Political Graveyard is a website and database that catalogues information on more than 277,000 American political figures and political families, along with other information. The name comes from the website's inclusion of burial locations of the deceased (when known). It is also a pun; where bodies are buried can refer to the politicians accused of crimes or touched by scandal.
The site was created in 1996 by Lawrence Kestenbaum, [1] [2] [3] then an academic specialist at Michigan State University, and later on staff at the University of Michigan.
Kestenbaum was formerly a county commissioner, and in 2004 was elected to be County Clerk/Register of Deeds of Washtenaw County, Michigan. [3] The site and its underlying database were developed from a personal interest triggered by the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, which was its original data source. Since then his personal research, and the information contributions of hundreds of volunteers, have greatly expanded the information available. It is licensed under the "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0" Creative Commons License.
Over the years, the definition of "eligible political figure" has been expanded. It now includes most high federal officials, ambassadors, all elected and some appointed statewide officeholders, and many mayors. It lists unsuccessful candidates, presidential electors, and delegates to U.S. presidential nominating conventions of the major political parties.
The database attempts to capture very basic biographical and office-holding data for its political figures. Besides where they are buried, cause of death is broken down into dozens of categories.
Politicians are listed alphabetically, by office held or sought, and by dates and locations of birth, residence, and death. The names are sorted and indexed by surname, birthplace, positions held, demography, geography, religion, occupation, cause of death, and final resting place.
Some are listed in categories, including occupations, ethnicity, religious and organizational affiliation, honors, and awards. "For example, 18 politicians were born into slavery; six have been in space; 69 survived assassination attempts; and 908 were in trouble or disgraced." [2] An exhaustive cataloging of transgressions are listed by the nature of the accusation, [1] as well as by decade and by state.
It reports their relation (at least by blood and marriage) with other politicians listed, their political party, and limited military history. The site also lists political families. Individuals listed on the site are linked together if their relationship meets the Rule of 1/1000 common ancestry. Each cluster of three or more linked politicians is treated as a family, with family name and location assigned by an algorithm; the largest individual family cluster is the Kennedys, with 34 members. The site's largest cluster, with 2,134 members, is called "Two Thousand Related Politicians", the most of the larger families are subsets of this group, with each subset defined and named by an algorithm. The largest subset family is the Huntington-Chapin-Waterman family of Connecticut, with 229 members.
William A. Paterson was born in Canada in 1838 and arrived in Flint, Michigan in 1868. He established the W. A. Paterson Company, a carriage-manufacturer. One of the original stockholders of Buick Motor Company, he entered the automobile business for himself and marketed the Paterson automobile.
John A. C. Menton was an American politician, the only Socialist mayor of Flint, Michigan (1911–1912). Menton was not only a member of the Socialist Party of America, he was also secretary-treasurer of the Central Labor Council and president of the local Cigar Makers' Union, one of the largest in the city. In 1906 and 1910 he ran unsuccessfully as a Socialist candidate for U.S. Representative from Michigan, 6th District.
The Edwards–Lincoln–Porter family is a family of politicians from the United States.
William A. Atwood was a Michigan politician.
Mathew Davison was a Michigan politician.
George T. Warren was a Michigan politician.
Oren Stone was a Michigan politician.
Frank D. Baker was a Michigan politician. He was an active member in the Odd Fellows, Masons, and Knights of the Maccabees.
Francis H. Rankin Jr. was a Michigan politician and publisher.
John C. Zimmerman Sr. was a Michigan politician.
Hugh Alexander Crawford, also referred to as H. Alexander Crawford, or H. Alex Crawford, was a Michigan politician.
Clark B. Dibble was a Michigan politician.
Bruce J. McDonald was a Michigan politician. He was a Masons and the Knights Templar member.
George E. McKinley was a Michigan politician.
Earl F. Johnson was a Michigan politician.
Edwin W. Atwood was a Michigan politician.
Ray A. Brownell was a Michigan politician.
Harvey J. Mallery was a Michigan politician.
Howard J. Clifford was a Michigan politician.
Harry Mason Comins was a Michigan politician.
'You always seem to have politicians doing bizarrely self-destructive things, especially involving sex,' says Lawrence Kestenbaum, creator of 'Political Graveyard,' a history Web site that includes an exhaustive cataloging of transgressions by politicians.
If you're sick to death of politics, take a stroll through The Political Graveyard (politicalgraveyard.com), which logs where more than 200,000 U.S. politicians are buried.