Recording and Memorialising Cemeteries
Part 4 of a 7 part series.
Through the Rural Municipality office cemetery clean up committees are established throughout the province to care for active cemeteries. Volunteers come together with lawn mowers, weed whackers, and chain saws to maintain active burial grounds to comply with their community standards.
Education is the key, to preserve a derelict cemetery. For historical conservation purposes it is wise to learn what to do, and what not to do. The Saskatchewan Historic Cemetery Manual and the A Graveyard Preservation Primer by Lynette Strangstad outline precautions necessary to increase awareness about cemetery preservation. Use caution in an historic cemetery site near large cemetery monuments, as these too, may break and topple. Trained volunteer cemetery crews, archaeologists or professionals recommended by the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation are required for preservation work on an historic graveyard in need of restoration. For such work, grants and assistance is available.
Non-invasive methods of reading fading inscriptions is imperative to preserve information for future generations of genealogists. Do no harm is mandated, headstones should not be sprayed with solvents or cleaning supplies as these may enter cracks, and further erode the stone. A simple mirror or plain rain water may help to bring out the shadow play on the inscription. “Rubbings” onto paper should never be made on stone which is soft and may break apart under the process further eroding a delicate stone. For example when attempting to read an eroded head stone, do not make rubbings with light weight paper that the wax or ink colour may bleed through.
Photographing a tombstone from a variety of angles and a tight close up opens up the capability for image enhancement in photo software to enlarge, and manipulate photos to bring out the natural contrasts, and highlights in the photographic image.
Share your photographs or transcriptions with one of the many agencies recording and memorializing cemeteries in Saskatchewan. A kind courtesy to other researchers is to take photos of all the tombstones, and then submit them online to an organisation such as the Canada Gen Web Saskatchewan Cemetery Project
- Series:
- Part 1 Cemetery Preservation: Preserving Landscapes of Memories
- Part 2 Cemeteries, the silent historian
- Part 3 Archaeological Cemeteries
- Part 4 Recording and Memorialising
- Part 5 Cemetery Vacations
- Part 6 Save our Saskatchewan Cemeteries
- Part 7 Heritage Cemeteries listing
- Additional Resources
Note: This program (Saskatchewan Genealogy Society ~ Saskatchewan Cemetery Care and Maintenance Program SCCMP ) has been discontinued, however it ws intriguing, so the information is left here in this blog online
Additional Resources:
Links
Canada Gen Web Saskatchewan Cemeteries Project
Network Canadian Cemetery Management September 2010 Vol 24 No 10
Saskatchewan Gen Web Cemetery Resources and Organisations
Saskatchewan Genealogy Society Cemetery Index
Saskatchewan Historic Cemetery Manual
SCCMP “The Saskatchewan Cemetery Care and Maintenance Program”
Books
- American Cemetery Research
Genealogy at a Glance by Sharon Debartolo Carmack - Saskatchewan’s Historic Cemeteries.
Cemetery Monument Conservation: – National Park Service (bibliography with an emphasis on stone) - Cryptic Clues in the Bone Yard by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
- Stories in Stone:
The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism by Douglas Keister - Landscapes of Memories A Guide for Conserving Historic Cemeteries: Repairing Tombstones, written by specialists in masonry conservation
- Michigan historic cemeteries preservation guide by
Gregg King, Susan Kosky, Kathleen Glynn, Gladys Saborio, Michigan Historical Center. - Municipal Designation of Cemeteries and Historic Places Initiative by Heritage Foundation of Canada
- Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period: A Guide for Conserving Historic Cemeteries By Harold Mytum
- Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records edited by Kory L. Meyerink
- Read Before You Leap ~ SAPIC Cemetery Preservation Library
of
Essential Information (Bibliography) - Your Guide to Cemetery Research by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
- Stories in Stone:
The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism by Douglas Keister
Victorian cemetery art by Edmund Vincent Gillon
Bibliography:
Links to sources are embedded in text above.
Additionally:
Redfield, Robert, Ralph Linton and Melville J. Herkovits
1936 Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation. American Anthropologist 38(1):149-
152.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Follow me on Word Press, Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, Live Journal, Sask Gen Web Ancestry.com and Flickriver
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
 Moon Fleur ~ Luna Rose by Julia Adamson |
Related articles
- Minn. Archaeologist Investigates Vanished Cemetery (minnesota.cbslocal.com)
- Deformed skulls discovered in 1,000-year-old Mexican cemetery (io9.com)
Saskatchewan Gen Web 