Cemetery Research

Lee Anthony from Friends of Coburg Cemetery recently spoke at Diamond Valley Library as part of the monthly Family History Fest program.  The cemetery is managed by the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust.  A Deceased search can be conducted on their website for all nineteen cemeteries in the Melbourne area under their care.

If you are researching your family history or have an interest in locating the final resting place of your ancestor consider the following:

Final resting place should be indicated on the death certificate of your ancestor.

Another source for the final resting place may be a death, funeral notice or newspaper obituary.

Look for the website for your cemetery of interest – and then see if there is a “deceased search” facility to find out about the cemetery and the specific location you are interested in.

Look for a Friends Group associated with the Cemetery who may possibly have information on your ancestor.  They may have developed a self-guided tour as the Friends of Coburg Cemetery have done, as well as conduct regular walks in person.

Visit the cemetery either in person or virtually via Google street view

Check opening hours and grave location before your visit. You may need to contact the Cemetery Trust / Caretaker /Local Council beforehand

Look to see if your cemetery has had a headstone indexing project in the past – GSV facilitated these a while ago. Search the collections of family history groups or your public library.

Your grave may not have a headstone.   Check directly with the cemetery for details of names who may share “your” grave.

Headstones inscriptions projects are just that – not a list of all the burials.  They may not necessarily include all the internments in the grave and do not include unmarked graves.

Some headstones may commemorate a person who is actually not buried at that location (for example war dead)

Take a note of names on neighbouring graves, including the row your grave is in - as these may be connected to your family.

Photograph and transcribe inscriptions on headstones for your records. 

There are a number of websites aggregating information from cemeteries, including photographs of headstones.  These include Billion Graves and Find My Grave with content constantly being added.

Cemetery Records

This week the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust requested tenders for the task to convert the records of cemeteries across Melbourne's inner and outer suburbs into one searchable database.  The trust governs 20 cemeteries from Williamstown to Healesville and is calling for tenders from suitable contractors to create a documents and records management system that covers them all in digital form.  Request for tender documents indicate that about 3.5 million hard copy records exist in the cemetery collections.  Many are likely to be handwritten and of great historical value. This is interesting news for the future of local and family history research in Victoria. 
Source: The Age Saturday September 13, 2004 (Classifieds p. 20)

Fawkner Memorial Park Indexing Project

The Genealogical Society of Victoria is undertaking a project to index all names appearing on the memorials at the Fawkner Memorial Park. Fawkner Park, established in 1906 and now part of the Greater MetropolitanCemeteries Trust, is one of the larger cemetery/crematorium complexes in Melbourne with approximately 7000 ceremonies per annum.

The Project will build on the work commenced by the late Tony Miller who transcribed the memorials in numerous sections of the cemetery. The project aims to photograph all memorials and use those images as the basis for the index. The resultant database will link each indexed name to the relevant image.

The Project has encountered, to date, about 100 memorials that contain names and other information in the Cyrillic script, predominately in the Roman Catholic compartments. No attempt asyet has been made to photograph the Ukrainian Catholic or the Greek or other compartments where presumably extensive numbers of memorials containing Cyrillic script reside.

Volunteers are needed in helping to translate the few Cyrillic script memorials encountered so far. The images would be supplied on a USB stick with a spreadsheet that required entry of basic details such as names and dates. The object of the Project is to create an index of names and not a transcription of the whole memorial.

Anyone interested in volunteering or obtaining further information should contact David Down on 9725 7131 or by email to dpd1949@gmail.com.

Fawkner Memorial Park 25 tenures about to expire

Fawkner Memorial Park (Cemetery) are announcing that some of their 25 tenures are expiring soon. These cremation memorials were purchased from 1 January 1984 onwards.

If you are the holder of right of a cremation memorial, or have a relative commemorated within the grounds in a cremation memorial, the cemetery would like to ensure that your contact details are up to date. To learn more and to access thier newsletter visit Fawkner Memorial Park

Creswick Cemetery Trust looking for relatives of miners

The Ballarat Courier recently reported that the Creswick Cemetery Trust is looking for relatives of the following miners who perished on Dec 12 1882 when the New Australasian Mine No 2 flooded. The trust has funding to revamp and clean up the gravesites, but consent must be obtained from the families. There are 19 altogether. A new interactive exhibition telling the story of the mine collapse opened at Sovereign Hill earlier this month.

If you have any information, contact Wendy Ohlsen on 0412 382 267 or write to PO Box 281 Creswick.
James MINIHAN
James WALSH/O'SHEA
Edward DARGON
Anton ANDERSSON
John HODGE
William CURTIS
William TREGLOAN
John CROUGEY
George BAULCOMB

Cemeteries and your family history

Cemeteries are a great resource to assist in your family history research. Visiting the final resting place of your ancestor can reveal information that you may not already know inluding for example, names of other family members.

Yarra Plenty Regional Library is pleased to host cemetery historian and Past President of the Genealogical Society of Victoria Mr David Weatherwill to speak more about how cemeteries can help us with our family history research, as part of the Family History Fest monthly program at Diamond Valley Library.

Cemeteries and your family history
Diamond Valley Library
Wednesday July 22 2009
1.30 - 2.30 pm
Bookings: 9434 3809

Deceased database online at Necropolis Cemetery

A Search deceased enquiry facility is now available on the Necropolis Cemetery website. Databases of the St Kilda and Springvale cemeteries can now be searched.
Maps of the cemeteries can also be accessed on the Downloads section of the site.

Benalla Cemetery online

Benalla CemeteryThanks to a grant from the Benalla Rural City, the cemetery records are now online. Included at this site is a copy of Register Of Burials and similar information from the headstones for which there is no entry in the register. At this stage pictures of the inscriptions for names A to D are also available the rest to come soon.
The Sexton is also compiling a list of those for whom there is no information, only that their Death Certificate says Buried at Benalla Cemetery. These are mainly pre 1900. If anyone has a relative whose Death Certificate indicates burial at Benalla Cemetery and you are unable to locate on the register e-mail the Benalla cemetery sexton: Kelvin Freemantle kelfreemantle@bigpond.com