FLHIG

Family and Local History
Indexing Group

Selected articles from the Newsletter

This article first appeared in SIGGNL 12  (May 1996)

Queensland Cemetery Indexes
by Christine Smith

I thought, not being involved with the work being done in the United Kingdom, I would write to let you know how our small team of indexers is progressing with the task we have undertaken down-under.

In 1992 I took up the position of Convenor of the Cemetery Sub-Committee for the Genealogical Society of Queensland Inc.  I proceeded to write letters to all the Shire/Town Councils and Cemetery Trustees that I could find addresses for, requesting copies of any burial records for cemeteries under their jurisdiction.  We have also tried to obtain copies of any funeral director's records from throughout the state.  Subsequently we have been able to obtain either through donation or purchase, copies of the burial registers and/or records for over 200 cemeteries from throughout Queensland.  This only includes a very small number of monumental inscriptions.

A copy is made of each register we receive and this is then bound and accessioned onto the Society's Library shelves.  The original copy is put in storage for safe-keeping.  The information contained on the registers ranges from just about everything to sometimes not much at all.  For example, the Hughenden Burial Register contained the following details: Surname / Given Names / Age / Date of Death / Date of Burial / Parent's Names / Place of Birth / Cause of Death / Occupation / Position in Cemetery.  The sales of these completed indexes have enabled us to continue to purchase more registers and keep the project going.

When we have indexed all the registers that we will be able to obtain from the councils or cemetery trustees, we will then index any of the monumental inscriptions transcripts that are on the Society's Library shelves.  Many of these transcripts have their own index, but we would like to be able to combine these into our comprehensive database and therefore need to have them in our database format.

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