Granger Plot Closure: Alternative Methods Only

Saint Joseph Valley Memorial Park, 375 W. Cleveland Rd, Granger, IN 46530. Goal: plot, section, and stone details for eight people whose burials at this park are verified by obituary, VA list, or cemetery database, but whose grave locations were unknown.

People: Benjamin Cochran (1892-1959), Leora Cochran (1898-1989), Benjamin Cochran (1933-1981), Jean Cochran (1934-2005), Betty Reeder (1927-2011), Max Reeder (1926-2009), Bernice Ricker (1930-2022), Daniel Ricker (d. Sep 9, 2000).

Method rule for this pass: Find a Grave excluded (it hard-blocks automated access). Free public sources only, deceased people only. Researched 2026-10-25.

Bottom line

No alternative method produced a plot, section, lot, or stone inscription for any of the eight. Every route was tried and is documented below with what it actually holds. One genuine gain: Daniel Ricker's burial at this park, previously the least verified of the eight, is now supported by two independent sources (VA Veterans Legacy Memorial and PeopleLegacy's park records). See Method 7.

Method 1: The park's own site and operator

• Official site: https://www.stjosephvalleymemorialpark.com/
• Operator: Everstory Partners, through its Memorial Planning network (memorialplanning.com).
• The site as fetched shows news, FAQ, and contact material. Address 375 W Cleveland Rd, Granger, IN 46530. Phone 574-367-7643. Hours Mon to Sat 9 to 6, Sun 10 to 3.
• No "search burials," "locate a grave," or "find a loved one" feature was found on the park's site, and none of the eight names resolves through the park's own site by search-index visibility. The operator's network sites do not offer a public burial locator for this park that could be found.
• An older published phone for the park, 574-272-6971, appears in the VA-derived Interment.net list, on the INGenWeb transcription page for the park, and in older directory listings. Both numbers are in print; the current site number is 574-367-7643.
• Palmer Funeral Homes connection: Palmer-published obituaries are the source that verified Betty Reeder's and Bernice Ricker's burials at this park. No Palmer-side grave locator was found.

Yield: park contact facts confirmed. No locator. No plot data.

Method 2: Michiana Genealogical Index (SBAGS, presented with SJCPL)

• Index home: https://sbags.org/maps-and-databases/michiana-genealogical-index/
• The Michiana Genealogical Index is Norbert Cramer's database: about 1.25 million surnames from 55 Michiana sources, in seven tables (birth, death, marriage, cemetery, license, divorce, ancestor files), surname indexed by spelling or Soundex. Cramer gave it to the South Bend Area Genealogical Society on the condition that it stay free to the public. The cemetery table is exactly the kind of source that could carry this park.
• The legacy search landing, http://www.sbags.org/michgenidx.htm, returned only a bot-verification interstitial ("One moment, please... Please wait while your request is being verified...") to the text fetcher. The search itself is an interactive form (a secondary source cites the cemetery endpoint as sbags.org/MGICemetery.php) that a text fetch cannot submit.
• Result: the route is located and real, but none of the eight surname searches could be executed this way. This is an unrun search, not a negative result.
• Note: Ancestry mirrors this index as "Web: Indiana and Michigan, U.S., Michiana Genealogical Cemetery Index, 1800-2010." That copy sits behind a subscription, so it is out of scope under the no-fees rule.

Yield: search route identified. Search not executable by fetch. Nothing run, nothing found.

Method 3: SBAGS Grave's Registration Project

• Files: per-letter PDFs on sbags.org under /wp-content/uploads/2023/07/, for example https://sbags.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/graveB.pdf and https://sbags.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/graveG.pdf (G, N, and U-V files also seen), plus a cemetery key file, cemkey.pdf.
• The cemetery key maps Saint Joseph Valley Memorial Park to registration pages 1054-1060, so the park is inside the project's numbering.
• Era problem, decisive: the sampled letter files (B, G, N, U-V) show death years topping out at 1939. The project is a pre-1940 graves registration. All eight targets died between 1959 and 2022, so none of them can appear in it, on any letter page, including the C file (Cochran) and the R file (Reeder, Ricker).
• SBAGS also lists a separate "Cemetery Inscriptions Index, Saint Joseph County," drawn from the published Saint Joseph County Cemetery Inscriptions volumes. Its links were not exposed to the fetcher and it could not be run.

Yield: closed for these eight, with reason. The registration predates all eight deaths.

Method 4: County transcriptions (INGenWeb, GenealogyTrails, AccessGenealogy, Interment.net)

INGenWeb / RootsWeb St. Joseph County: a partial transcription EXISTS

• County cemetery index: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~instjose/cemeteries/cemeteries.htm lists "SAINT JOSEPH VALLEY MEMORAL, Partial Listing, CLAY - SOUTH BEND."
• Park page: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~instjose/cemeteries/stjoevalleymemorial/stjosephvalleymemorial.htm Title: St. Joseph Valley Memorial Cemetery. Gives 375 W Cleveland Rd, Granger, IN, phone 574-272-6971, latitude 41.722N, longitude -86.183W. Started November 3, 2005, last updated October 28, 2007. Names are split across letter-range pages.
• C to D page, read in full: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~instjose/cemeteries/stjoevalleymemorial/stjosephvalleymemorial-c-d.htm Entries run Carlley through Dunfee. There is NO Cochran entry of any spelling. Benjamin Cochran (1892-1959), Leora Cochran (1898-1989), Benjamin Cochran (1933-1981), and Jean Cochran (1934-2005) are all absent.
• Q to R page, read in full: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~instjose/cemeteries/stjoevalleymemorial/stjosephvalleymemorial-q-r.htm Entries run Raab through Roberts. There is NO Reeder entry (it would fall between Reed and Reynolds) and NO Ricker entry (it would fall between Rice and Rieffel). Daniel Ricker is absent.
• Reading of the result: this is a contributor-submitted partial listing (main contributors Mary Jo Koran, Dan Rich, Steve Floor), not a full park reading, so absence here is a coverage gap, not evidence against burial. Its 2007 cutoff also predates Max Reeder (2009), Betty Reeder (2011), and Bernice Ricker (2022) entirely.

GenealogyTrails

• St. Joseph County obituary collection: http://genealogytrails.com/ind/stjoseph/obits.html carries Tribune obituaries that name this park for other families (for example Moncer L. Young, d. 2000). No entry for any of the eight surfaced.

AccessGenealogy

• No transcription of this park under any of its names was located in search.

Interment.net

• No general transcription of this park. Interment.net carries only the VA-derived "Veterans Buried in Indiana Cemeteries" compilation (source 625), for example https://www.interment.net/united-states/indiana/veterans-burials/records.php?page=768 Entries give name, dates, service, cemetery name, address, and phone, with no section or site for private cemeteries. This compilation is the source that verified Max Reeder's burial at the park in the earlier pass. It cannot supply plot data.

Yield: the one real transcription is partial and contains none of the eight. No plot data.

Method 5: PeopleLegacy deep pages

• Park page: https://peoplelegacy.com/cemetery/saint_joseph_valley_memorial_park-676M/ 21,532 burial records. GPS 41.72174, -86.18315. Phone (574) 272-6971.
• Surname listing read in full: https://peoplelegacy.com/burial-records/benjamin/cochran/ (92 Benjamin Cochran records nationally). It confirms both target Benjamins at this park, name and years and cemetery address only:
  • Benjamin Cochran, 1933-1981 (aged 48), address 375 W Cleveland Rd, Granger, Indiana 46530.
  • Benjamin Cochran, 1892-1959 (aged 66), address 375 W Cleveland Rd, Granger, Indiana 46530.
• Jean Cochran (1934-2005) is likewise confirmed at the park address in PeopleLegacy surname records, and Daniel Dean Ricker, 2000 (aged 72), appears on the park's records.
• Limitation: the individual "View Gravesite" pages could not be opened by text fetch, because the listing page does not expose those links to the fetcher. PeopleLegacy individual pages at some other cemeteries do carry a Plot field, so any plot, section, GPS pin, linked-relative, or source-note fields on these four individual pages remain unchecked. This route needs one human click-through; it yielded nothing further here.

Yield: burials reconfirmed for both Benjamins, Jean, and Daniel. No plot, section, or GPS beyond the cemetery's own coordinates.

Method 6: BillionGraves direct

• Searches by cemetery name (Saint Joseph Valley Memorial Park, Granger) and by surname (Cochran, Reeder, Ricker) returned no BillionGraves cemetery page for this park and no records for any of the eight. BillionGraves results that did surface were for unrelated cemeteries.

Yield: no BillionGraves coverage of this park located. Nothing found.

Method 7: Newspaper funeral notices

• Target: free Tribune funeral notice text naming a park section or funeral home chapel, above all for Daniel Ricker (d. Sep 9, 2000).
• No free notice text for Daniel Ricker surfaced. Tribune obituary archives that are free to read (GenealogyBuff's St. Joseph County collection, the genlookups.com Indiana archive) carry notices naming this park for other families, but no Ricker notice was found in them, and no notice naming a park section or a funeral-home chapel was found for any of the eight.
• Daniel Ricker upgrade, from the VA: the Veterans Legacy Memorial page https://www.vlm.cem.va.gov/DANIELDRICKER/E4815 is for Daniel D. Ricker, born Feb 7, 1928, died Sep 9, 2000, US Army, Korea, Latin cross emblem. The search-index copy of that page names SAINT JOSEPH VALLEY MEMORIAL PARK as his resting place; the live page currently displays no resting-place detail and no section or site. Together with PeopleLegacy's park record ("Daniel Dean Ricker 2000 (aged 72)"), his burial at this park now rests on two sources. It is still the thinnest file of the eight: no obituary text and no funeral home named anywhere free.

Yield: no section or chapel named anywhere free. Daniel's burial place firmed up.

Per-person result

What remains unclosed, and the human route that settles it

Unclosed: the section, lot, and grave numbers, and any stone inscriptions, for all eight people. No free online source located in this pass carries plot-level data for this park.

The route that settles it is the park office. Nothing was contacted for this pass; these are the published details for a human call or visit:

• Saint Joseph Valley Memorial Park, 375 W Cleveland Rd, Granger, IN 46530.
• Current published phone (park's own site): 574-367-7643.
• Older published phone (VA list, INGenWeb page, directories): 574-272-6971.
• Hours per the park's site: Mon to Sat 9 to 6, Sun 10 to 3.
• Operator: Everstory Partners / Memorial Planning. Site: https://www.stjosephvalleymemorialpark.com/

One call or visit with the eight names and death years should return section and lot for all eight, and can confirm whether the couples (Benjamin and Leora, Benjamin and Jean, Max and Betty, Daniel and Bernice) share double stones or adjoining lots.

Two smaller human routes remain open as well: run the Michiana Genealogical Index cemetery search in a real browser (free, at the SBAGS page above), and click through the four PeopleLegacy individual gravesite pages (both Benjamins, Jean, Daniel) in case a Plot field is populated there.