California volunteers are recording information from tombstones such as those at a Spanish mission gravesite.
All 58 of California's counties are participating in the Tombstone Transcription Project, an effort to document every cemetery and record the information on tombstones in California. As time and weather deteriorate tombstones, information that was placed on the marker as a permanent reminder of the individual who passed away can easily be lost and, once gone, much of it cannot be recovered. The information from California is then given to the USGenWeb Tombstone Project, an effort to gather tombstone transcription from throughout the country.
Volunteer Effort
The California Tombstone Transcription Project is an effort conducted by volunteers. Many come from religious groups, genealogy societies, families and individuals interested in preserving the legacy of the past. People are encouraged to organize groups to tackle public and private cemeteries. For example, in Merced County, the six public and two private cemeteries are assigned to individuals who receive and record grave transcripts. The San Joaquin National Cemetery falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Database.
California Efforts
Eight of the nine cemeteries in Del Norte County, in the far northern part of California, are being transcribed and recorded by three women, while the nine cemeteries in San Luis Obispo County, located between San Francisco and Los Angeles, each has its own transcriber and recorder. Eleven of Stanislaus County's 22 cemeteries have been transcribed by members of the Genealogical Society of Stanislaus County, with the resulting lists posted online. Several counties that have posted their lists include historical background information, who conducted the work, and the methodologies they employed. Occasionally, private cemeteries have been recorded, such as such as the Thorpe Family Cemetery in La Grange that has only four graves.
Preparation for Volunteers
When preparing to begin the recording work, arm yourself with paper and pencils, a large spray bottle of water, some soft brushes, some scrubber pads, grass clippers and a kneeling pad, knee pads or an old towel or blanket that you can fold into a kneeling pad. The project guidelines suggest that you attempt to secure a cemetery map that shows every grave and use it to mark your progress.
Methodology
For example, in Modesto Citizens' Cemetery, a group of volunteers transcribed the card file records and burial books at the cemetery office, and then recorded the inscriptions on the tombstones. They then gave the information to another volunteer, who created a computer file. The computer file was augmented by data from the Burial Permits of Stanislaus County, which constituted more than 5,000 names recorded on 97 pages. About 2,500 of these records, generally pre-1910, were not in the cemetery files. The volunteers filled in the blanks by consulting cemetery maps, deeds, burial orders, obituaries, and other information sources, including the California Death Index, an online search engine containing a billion records from a variety of sources.
Tags: private cemeteries, Project effort, Stanislaus County, Tombstone Transcription, California Tombstone, California Tombstone Transcription, cemeteries have