Showing posts with label Cemeteries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cemeteries. Show all posts

Saturday, June 3, 2023

At the Cemetery

Headstones and cemetery records can be incredibly useful records to find.  The information found on headstones can be remarkably varied in content, with anything from a simple name to the details of parents, spouse, children and dates and places of birth and death.  Sometimes finding one relative in a cemetery leads to the discovery of several more, with whole generations of family all buried in the same location.  Over the years I have had some great finds in cemeteries that have helped me overcome brick walls and the loss of other records. 

 
As digitization of cemetery records and photographing of headstones becomes increasingly common, we are able to access from home even more records.  While nothing can replace actually visiting an ancestor’s grave in person, finding records I cannot visit myself available online is a definite bonus.  I have found online the cemetery records of a number of relatives who lived overseas, whose graves I am unlikely to be able to visit for some time, if ever.  Like so many other researchers, I owe a debt to those who have given their time to photograph headstones and transcribe cemetery records.

I have been lucky enough to acquire photographs of the headstones of many family members, some during personal visits and others sent by relatives or located online through sites like Find-A-Grave or BillionGraves.  The quality and amount of information on them varies a lot, as does the legibility and the state of preservation of the headstone.  It is worth noting that not all tombstones actually date from the time the gravesite was actually used - the stones themselves could be installed at a much later date by relatives, or be replacements for older stones which have been damaged or destroyed.

 
One particular headstone I have photographed was in extremely good condition, and commemorated several family members from a couple of generations.  The stone probably dates from the time of death of the last person included - was there an older tombstone in place at some time that has now been replaced, or is this a more 'general' tombstone that commemorates several family members buried in the area over time??  Who erected this stone, and where did they obtain the information they have included on it?  I need to delve into the cemetery records for this particular tombstone to find out more, and confirm the accuracy of the records, especially the older names and dates.

Friday, November 18, 2022

#52Ancestors - Week 46 - Tombstones

Tombstones and memorial plaques can be a hugely exciting find for any genealogist, and many cemeteries today have websites where researchers can locate burial details, headstone and memorial transcriptions and even photographs of the headstones and memorials themselves.

Finding the grave of an ancestor and obtaining a photo of the tombstone can provide an extremely varied amount of information.  Some tombstones are a virtual essay of information, like the memorial plaque below for the Pike family of Gedding Mill.  It not only gives names and dates of both parents but also details of all their children, including a son killed in action in WW1.

 
Other headstones are less helpful, with scant details and weathered, unreadable script.  The grave below has no headstone as such, with the surname 'Pummeroy' simply inscribed on the border of the grave.
 
 
Sometimes one tombstone contains details of several burials, either covering a family plot or multiple burials in a single grave.  The tombstone below details several burials in a family plot, including David and Jane Mulholland and three of their children who died as children : Henry aged 4 years 8 months, Margaret aged 6 years 4 months and Thomas aged 1 year 2 months.

 
Amongst my family photos I have a number of tombstones and memorial plaques, many of which I have obtained online from cemetery sites in areas I have not been able to visit in person.  These are a huge boon for a genealogist who is mostly researching overseas with limited opportunities to travel, and it is always exciting to find another cemetery record available.
 

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Digital Churchyard Mapping Project for the Church of England

The Church of England has launched a new project to map all its churchyards using laser equipment.  They have partnered with surveying company Atlantic Geomatics, who will map Church of England churchyards using backpack-mounted laser scanners, as well as photographing the headstones.  The resulting records will be published on a new website, where they will enable family historians to discover where their ancestors are buried.

Bishop Andrew Rumsey, lead Bishop for church buildings said: “This impressive national project will make a huge difference to those researching family history, as well as easing the administrative burden on parishes.  It will improve management of burial grounds, and make information more fully accessible than ever before, supported by additional services by subscription for those wishing to go further.  It will soon be possible to visit almost any Anglican burial ground in the country and see in real time the location of burial plots. For those researching at distance in the UK or overseas, the digital records will place detailed information from churchyards at their fingertips.”

The project aims to survey the majority of the Church of England’s 19,000 burial grounds by 2028.

The website, which is due to launch in spring 2022, will combine data on burials and biodiversity data on the plants and animals in the churchyards.  It is anticipated the site will provide free to access for Church of England parishes, with additional services available to subscribers. 

After a successful pilot project which mapped the churchyards of All Hallows Church in Kirkburton and Emmanuel Church in Shelley, both in the Diocese of Leeds, the programme has now successfully mapped the churchyard of St Bega in Bassenthwaite in the Diocese of Carlisle.

The live links to the records on these two pilot studies can be found here:

Friday, July 16, 2021

Find A Grave - the Good and the Bad

Find-A-Grave has been active for more than 20 years, first appearing online way back in 1995. Originally it consisted of records of celebrities and their burial sites and was created by Jim Tipton, an American with a passion for visiting the graves of the rich and famous.

As the site grew it expanded to include the graves of non-celebrities and moved from the United States to the rest of the world.

As the popularity of the site took off Tipton sold the Find A Grave to Ancestry. The site now contains more than 75 million photos and over 170 million burial records.

The vast majority of contributors on Find A Grave have the best of intentions — to help others. At its best, the site can be a boon for Family History researchers.  Being able to view the grave/headstone of a relative buried overseas or in a place we cannot easily access ourselves is a huge treat.  That this website is completely free makes it even better.  Several times I have been delighted to find a relative has a memorial on Find-A-Grave, complete with dates and details.  Always I am amazed at the generosity of people out there, giving their time to help make researching easier for others.

Within the Find-A-Grave community, however, there has emerged a small group of users who seem more motivated by competition. The top contributors have added over 200,000 memorials each, and there are some who have over a million each.

Issues have arisen with the webpage of users - all volunteers - who in their haste to add to their count of memorials, have forgotten that not everyone wants their recently deceased loved ones to have an online memorial, especially one added and controlled by a complete stranger.  In the worst cases, a Find-A-Grave obituary has been posted online before all the individual's family members have even been notified.  Then there are issues of accuracy - and how to get inaccurate information corrected of removed.

Several suggestions have been made to create a moratorium on non-family-members posting memorials for the recently-deceased on Find A Grave for at least some time to give the families of those involved a chance to deal with a loved one’s death.  To date no steps seem to have been made in this direction.

 

 

Friday, March 6, 2020

Church Heritage Record Announces New Project

It has just been announced that all Church of England burial ground records will be available to search within five years under an ambitious new laser-scanning survey scheme.  Records of the burial grounds for two West Yorkshire churches – All Hallows’ Church in Kirkburton and Emmanuel Church in Shelley – are now available online, and the Church plans to survey all 15,000 burial grounds by 2025.

Nick Edmonds, the Church of England’s senior media officer, said: “It’s a system that has potential for enormous growth and future usage.  It can help people with their family history and accessing burial grounds that they didn’t know about before."  Each burial record will include the name of the deceased, their burial date, their age at death and a photograph of the grave.

The databases will be available via the Church Heritage Record.  Currently the Church Heritage Record website contains over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England covering a wide variety of topics including architectural history, archaeology, art history and the surrounding natural environment. The website is still currently a work in progress and is by no means complete.

The Church will provide £250,000 towards the project and has received the same amount from Historic England, which has also provided spatial data records to support the project.  The scanning also has ecological benefits, by measuring the growth of trees and plants in the graveyards.  It will also help church authorities identify where empty space is available for new burials.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 8 - At the Cemetery


Headstones and cemetery records can be incredibly useful records to find.  The information found on headstones can be remarkably varied in content, with anything from a simple name to the details of parents, spouse, children and dates and places of birth and death.  Sometimes finding one relative in a cemetery leads to the discovery of several more, with whole generations of family all buried in the same location.  Over the years I have had some great finds in cemeteries that have helped me overcome brick walls and the loss of other records.

As digitization of cemetery records and photographing of headstones becomes increasingly common, we are able to access from home even more records.  While nothing can replace actually visiting an ancestor’s grave in person, finding records I cannot visit myself available online is a definite bonus.  I have found online the cemetery records of a number of relatives who lived overseas, whose graves I am unlikely to be able to visit for some time, if ever.  Like so many other researchers, I owe a debt to those who have given their time to photograph headstones and transcribe cemetery records.

I have been lucky enough to acquire photographs of the headstones of many family members, some during personal visits and others sent by relatives or located online through sites like Find-A-Grave or BillionGraves.  The quality and amount of information on them varies a lot, as does the legibility and the state of preservation of the headstone.  It is worth noting that not all tombstones actually date from the time the gravesite was actually used - the stones themselves could be installed at a much later date by relatives, or be replacements for older stones which have been damaged or destroyed.

One particular headstone I have photographed was in extremely good condition, and commemorated several family members from a couple of generations.  The stone probably dates from the time of death of the last person included - was there an older tombstone in place at some time that has now been replaced, or is this a more 'general' tombstone that commemorates several family members buried in the area over time??  Who erected this stone, and where did they obtain the information they have included on it?  I need to delve into the cemetery records for this particular tombstone to find out more, and confirm the accuracy of the records, especially the older names and dates.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

WW1 Monumenta

Retired artist Howard Wood has created WW1 Monumenta, a new website of 360-degree photo panoramas of Commonwealth First World War cemeteries in France and Belgium. It features approximately 500 cemeteries so far, with plans to add up to 450 more.

Cemeteries are listed in alphabetical order, so you simply find the mane of the cemetery you are looking for and see if there is a link to that name yet.  If there is, you can enter the cemetery and conduct a full 360 degree sweep.  Individual headstones are not photographed, but you can get the feeling of standing in the cemetery (generally a central point) and turning around for a seamless view.

While the website is clearly still in development, a huge amount of work has already been done, and the result gives you a feeling of actually standing in the cemetery taking in the views.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Week 17 - Cemeteries - 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 17, focusing on Cemeteries, should have been done the last week in April.  Here I am, almost to the end of May, and again I am playing catch-up.  Where has the time gone?
I have had a fair bit of luck with cemeteries and headstones, especially in finding records and photographs online, although it is still wonderful when I get to visit an ancestor's grave in person.  It is just not always possible, and websites like Find-A-Grave or Australian Cemeteries are sites I visit frequently.
My ancestor David Mulholland was born in 1830 in Ireland and died 8 April 1902 in Eurobin.  His wife Eliza Jane (McCrae) was also born in Ireland and died 28 October 1925 in Eurobin.  Both are buried in Bright Cemetery, and there are photographs of their family plot available on several websites.  The ones below are from the Find-A-Grave website I mentioned earlier.

Mulholland family plot, Bright Cemetery, Victoria
David and Eliza had 14 children together, some of whom died quite young.  Several of the children are also buried in the plot and are commemorated on the main headstone or on the smaller memorials on either side.  Finding a headstone and/or cemetery record is always exciting, as they can contain quite a lot of information and I always check both, as the cemetery record may contain different information.  Below I have included the details of the Mulholland family included in the Bright Cemetery Register, which includes names, birth, death and burial dates, section, block and lot of the graves, religion, cause of death and other information, such as family relationships.  Not all of this is included on the headstones, and it adds so much to my research.

Details of the Mulholland Family buried in Bright Cemetery


Main headstone
One of the smaller headstones in the plot