Cemetery reports

Question

I prepared 2 reports about cemeteries. One is for Cemetery categories on Wikitree and another is for FindAGrave cemeteries based on links to FindAGrave on profiles.

Reports are grouped by regions and are automatically split in subregions where there are hundreds of cemeteries.

Big Cemeteries are listed separately for performance reasons. They also usually need more work, since there are a lot of profiles involved.

• Cemetery categories have 4 groups based on the needed actions.
  • Unlinked Categories: Lists all Cemetery Categories that are not linked to FindaGrave cemetery.
  • Empty Categories: Lists all Cemetery Categories that are linked to multiple FindaGrave cemeteries.
  • Multiple Categories: Lists all Cemetery Categories that are linked to multiple FindaGrave cemeteries.
  • Linked Categories: Lists all Cemetery Categories that are linked to a single FindaGrave cemetery.
• FindAGrave Cemeteries have 5 groups based on the needed actions.
  • Missing Cemeteries: Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles linked to them without a WikiTree category. It is most likely that there is no cemetery category on wikitree, but make sure before creating a new one.
  • Unlinked Cemeteries: Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles linked to them with a WikiTree category that is not linked to FindaGrave. To link it to the FindAGrave, use CategoryInfoBox or if it is already used, make dure that |findagaveIS= parameter is entered.
  • Multiple Cemeteries: Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles and multiple WikiTree categories linked to a single cemetery. Usually a profile is in wrong category.
  • Partial Cemeteries: Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles and WikiTree categories linked to them and are missing the Cemetery category on profiles.
  • Complete Cemeteries: Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles and WikiTree categories linked to them and are complete and have no problems.

Comments

@ Aleš, Following on from Craig's question above, I have a few profiles which are categorised to two cemeteries because remains are interred in one cemetery (usually a war cemetery in a foreign country) but there is a headstone or some kind of memorial in a cemetery in Australia. I can see cenotaphs have been discussed below but I am still not clear what I am supposed to do with these. eg See Schipp-73 (145252674) which appears on the Multiple Categories Report for Australia/NSW/Maclean

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I also don't have an exelent idea on what to do with them.

I could do something in case of 2 cemetery categories on the profile. I already tried something but I didn't like the results. I will try something else in the following days.

One solution could be to parse Cenotaph from FindAGrave, but I am not sure how usefull that would be.

For now don't do anything about such profiles. I hope I will automatically handle those.

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Ales,  for your debugging efforts.

Rayner-90  Reports No FAG Memorial Defined for Orange Cemetery yet FAG Memorial 216297660 for Orange Cemetery is defined on the profile and valid for Orange Cemetery.

Enjoy

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Rayner-90 has FAG memorial defined as {{FindAGrave|216297660|sameas=no}} So I don't consider that as matching memorial.

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I may have missed something, but I can't find the counties in New York City in the Cemetery category.

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The counties are usually in the Other group unless there are more than 40 categories in a county or 100 FG cemeteries.

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I'm not sure I understand your answer regarding New York City.  Each of the 5 counties(boroughs) would have a large number of categories or FG cemetery's.

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I thought you were asking about the new cemetery reports

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Automated:DBE_Categories_Suggestions#Cemetery_reports

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I still don’t know how to find the cemeteries in New York City. Can you help me with that?

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Hi Rolf. They are listed here:

Category: New York County, New York, Cemeteries

Edited to add: Sorry, those are only the ones in Manhattan. For more, see Category: New York, Cemeteries. You'd have to know which counties in New York State are in New York City.

Answer 1

Thank you for your work on this Aleš.  

Having had a quick glance through some of the English categories, a "problem" which stands out to me in the Multiple Categories list is Find-A-Grave's insistence on using current administrative counties for their graveyards whilst many of the Wikitree one use the ancient ceremonial locations.

Find-A-Grave's main aim is that people can use the given address to actually find a grave, but from the Wikitree side of things, we find references that say for instance a person was buried in Lancashire and so would expect Wiikitree to have the relevant grave site listed under Lancashire, whereas Find-A-Grave would list the same grave under Greater Manchester.  Whilst those of us who are aware of the boundary changes can work our way through the discrepancy, I can understand it is as confusing to people who don't know about the political geography as it is as frustrating for those of us who do know, to have our ancestors' graves defined in the "wrong" county.

I also realise it would be a huge job but given that family researchers are consistently going to find their ancestors' burials recorded under one location and anyone looking for the actual grave is going to need to locate it under a different address, the ideal would be to be able to cross reference the locations when they are actually for the same graveyard. Is there any way we can make a cemetery show in multiple county listings when we create them?

Comments

This reports aren't about locations, they are designed just to validate profile categorisation and category link to FindAGrave. It doesn't matter if FAG and WT locations are different.

A cemetery category can have 2 or even more locations or parent categories assigned to them. It is usually used in case a cemetery is on the county border or if the borders changed. But it is good to enter a text to the category about why 2 are used.

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I can't give you a definitive answer but my opinion is free.  People are born and die in the historical location and the act of burial could also be the historical location however the burial location should be the present day location unless they moved the body for some reason.

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Thanks Aleš. I suspect I was overthinking it.

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It seems to make sense in theory, Stu, but in practice, the current administrative boundaries are likely to change at the whim of government whereas there is no suggestion that the ceremonial counties will change and by and large, these have existed for hundreds of years.  If we are to stick with using the current format, there will be a lot of work for Find-A-Grave, Wikitree, etc. to do when the next change occurs. Using the ceremonial counties as the base location would eliminate the need for considerable updating every few years.

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Cemeterists use CURRENT locations, not historical ones, because the point is to photograph graves and give locations/maps of where they exist in modern day (so people could visit a grave.) I can't visit a non-existing county or find a map for where the cemetery is based on an old map.

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According to the rumblings from governments what is current won't stay that way for much longer and so by that reckoning, hundreds, if not thousands of cemetery references will have to be changed for the benefit of those who need to keep things current. Personally, I would rather cross reference individual items rather than have to stop progress by having to update all those cemeteries which are no longer in their current locations.

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Keep in mind that the physical locations of the cemeteries don't change.  The address does.  That means that FindAGrave needs regular maintenance.  If you want to change your profiles, you certainly can but if not, the link to FindAGrave and the Categories don't change.  The only maintenance you really need to do is update any text you added to the profile and that's not required in the first place.

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Thanks Stu, "the physical locations of the cemeteries don't change" -  exactly what I have been saying all along.  Let's not hijack Aleš' thread, any further.

Answer 2

Great reports, Aleš! I have been working on them already.

Will we be able to mark certain errors as false? For example, I have run across a cemetery category, for a single burial, where there is no Find A Grave cemetery created for it. It's valid on WikiTree.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Liptrap_Grave_Cemetery,_Elbert_County,_Colorado

I would like to mark this as a false error so it doesn't continue to show up on the report.

Thoughts?

Edit: This is under Unlinked cemeteries in Colorado.

Comments

Eric you can add a single burial plot with some caveats on Find A Grave.

https://support.findagrave.com/s/article/Adding-Cemeteries-and-Burial-Types

What if they are buried but not buried in a cemetery?

• One burial - ‘Add a cemetery’ and name it ‘Individual’s name Burial Site’ i.e. Jens Jensen Burial Site. Add the memorial for Jens Jensen to that burial site.
• Two or more burials - ‘Add a cemetery’ named ‘Surname Cemetery’ i.e. Lopez Cemetery. Add the memorials to Lopez Cemetery.

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I could, I suppose. But I'm not interested in adding this to Find A Grave just to make it match WikiTree. My focus is on WikiTree first. I would rather work on WikiTree becoming the source of truth. I know that will take some time to achieve.

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I think it is enough to write on a category that there is no FAG cemetery.

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Ok, thanks. That's what I had done.

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There should be no category if it is a single burial. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Category_Names#General_Rules : "If a category could only contain a few people do not create it"

Categories are made to group profiles together, so a category that would only ever contain one profile kind of defeats the purpose.

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Yep, right about that Isabelle. 

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@Isabelle: If it we were discussing any other category types, I would absolutely agree with you, and I have recommended exactly this to other people. 

However, I have a slight disagreement when it comes to Cemeteries. There are quite a number of cemeteries in many locations in the U.S. that are very small, and have only a few interments. For example in a number of U.S. states it was common in the 1800s to have "family" cemeteries that were on a portion of farmland set aside. 

The Help page on Categories say "If a category could only contain a few people do not create it." (Stress in the help page itself.) How many is "a few people"? This is left open for interpretation. However, this guideline is antithetical to the goals of the Cemeterist project which is to categorize people into the cemeteries that they are located in. Cemeteries have now been defined as an extension of a One Location Study. Grouping those who are buried in the same cemetery, no matter how small, serves a genealogical purpose because it can help to illuminate who might be family to each other.

By arbitrarily creating a minimum number of people who can be in such a cemetery category, it defeats these purposes. But, I would also strongly argue that a cemetery category only, deserves such an exception to this guideline.

But the Cemeterist project and leadership needs to weigh in on this.

Answer 3

Just remember that if you create the category and  you end up with a red-linked location, please also add THAT category to WikiTree. Please try not to leave it for others to add. If you need help with that, just ask here in g2g.

Comments

Is there a specific Help page that you can recommend as a guideline for that?

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It depends on the country. Categorizing locations is here:https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Category_Names_for_Regions

US is here:https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Category_Names_for_Regions#United_States_of_America.27s_Regional_Categories

Generally, townships are named with the county, state also in the category name. Exceptions are New Jersey, Charter Townships in Michigan, and many of the townships in eastern PA also go by Township, State.  It's a good idea to look at existing categories within a county to get an idea. And you can always ask in g2g.

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Ok, thank you. I was also really looking for what to put on a location category, similar to cemeteries, like this:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:CategoryInfoBox_Location

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Yep, use the location category CIB. I always use the required and the preferred parameters, but sometimes I leave off the team= because the project doesn't have teams. I do tend to use wikidataID. Here is my "go-to" location CIB:

{{CategoryInfoBox Location |parent= |parent1= |aka= |project= |image= |coordinate= |wikidataID= |webpage= |webpagetext= |profiles= }} I do not always fill in webpage or parent1 or aka. Depends on the location I'm working on.

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Do you mean https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:CategoryInfoBox_Cemetery ?

Answer 4

I don't understand. What are we supposed to do about "Cemetery Categories that are linked to multiple FindaGrave cemeteries."?

Does this mean one cemetery has several Find A Grave sites? If so, it is on Find A Grave, not on WikiTree. Surely we're not expected to fix Find A Grave's errors?

Comments

I was just looking at some of these. 

• Some of them appear to have the wrong category on WikiTree and should be corrected. I saw several where there are two cemeteries with the same name in different places and the WikiTree profile is in the category for the wrong one. Or WikiTree only currently has a category for one and the profile is in that category, but the person is buried in the other one - these should have a category added for the other cemetery and the profile moved to that new category.
• Some of them appear to have memorials/gravestones in two different cemeteries and therefore probably should be in two categories. For example, a soldier who was killed in battle and buried nearby but the family also put a memorial up in the local cemetery. Or a child who died young and had one gravestone placed at the time of death, presumably, but then was also listed on the side of his parents' gravestone. It would be nice if there were a way to mark these so that they don't keep showing up in these cemetery reports, causing multiple people to try to track down the problem. Maybe a parameter should be added to the FindAGrave template, something like MultipleBurials=Yes.

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Yes, this is why Aleš has his lists in the post. Multiple burials? I don't think so. One place has the remains and another is a cenotaph. This could be explained in the biography.

I have been addressing duplicate cemetery categories but there are many and they keep piling up. What people should do is check the potential parent category to see if the category already exists, and remember, there are alternate names for many cemeteries and people have created those as categories, which duplicates the effort.

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I think I agree with what you're saying and you're right that these are not actually multiple burials, but there are still multiple gravestones/memorial markers/whatever the technical term is for a single person in multiple cemeteries. So, my understanding is that they should be in the category for each cemetery where there is some kind of marker for them, especially if it's not clear where they were actually buried and which is the cenotaph. If they're in both categories, even if the reason is explained in the bio, then the cemeteries will be listed in the Multiple Cemeteries list on this new report, which to me indicates that there's some kind of problem that needs to be "solved". If there's no way to indicate that it's not a problem, and move it out of that category or have that profile not show up in the report in the way it currently does, then there's the potential that over and over, WT members are going to look at this report, then go to the profile, read through the bio and check the sources, in order to eventually determine that there's not actually a problem. That's potentially a lot of wasted time that could be spent on other things that are actually productive. So maybe MultipleBurials is not a great name for this suggested parameter or there's a better technical way to deal with this in the way the report is generated, but it seems to me like it is a problem that should be addressed if possible.

For example, I'm looking at United States > Ohio > Others > Multiple Categories > Johnson's Island Confederate Cemetery, Marblehead, Ohio. The "problematic" profile is Henagan-11. It's only in the category where he's buried, but it also has a FindAGrave source citation for another cemetery from where he had lived where there's a memorial stone for him. I'm not in the cemeterist project, so maybe there's a protocol I'm not aware of, but my intuition would say he should be in both categories. In any event, this profile gives an "error" that puts the linked cemetery in this Multiple Cemeteries category in this report.

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Natalie, I'm not sure if your comments on duplicate cemetery categories are addressed to me - the ones I was referring to are not duplicate cemeteries and I'm certainly not advocating creating duplicate categories. I'll give an example of what I was talking about. In the Cemeteries Reports, I was looking at United States > Ohio > Others > Multiple Categories > Winchester Cemetery, Winchester, Ohio. The "problem" profile is Poore-119, which is in the category for Winchester Cemetery, Winchester, Ohio which is in Adams County, Ohio. This profile has a source for a FindAGrave profile in a Winchester Cemetery in Jackson County, Ohio, which is clearly a different cemetery than the one in Adams County. The Jackson County one does not yet have a category on WikiTree as far as I can tell from looking at the Jackson County, Ohio, Cemeteries. So in this case, I believe a new Winchester Cemetery category would need to be created for the Jackson County one and the Poole profile recategorized to that cemetery.

In general, I was trying to address Isabelle's question of what gets flagged in this category in the new Cemetery Report and how it would be addressed with "corrections" on WikiTree rather than it necessitating making changes on FindAGrave like she was concerned about.

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About  Henagan-11: I am not sure but I guess there are 2 FindAGrave memorials in such cases. I don't remember seeing anything on FindAGrave about 2 memorials for a person. And a profile is linked only to one and I don't think that will change.

The correct soulution would be to include both Cemetery categories on the profiles.

This is already visible on FindAGrave reports. See https://wikitree.sdms.si/Categories/FindAGraveCemeteries/AfricaMultipleCemeteriesSmall.htm El Alamein War Cemetery for Treweeke-3

I will try to make that visible also on https://wikitree.sdms.si/Categories/WikiTreeCemeteries/OthersMultipleCategoriesSmall.htm report.

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Aleš, why do you say "a profile is only linked to one" memorial?

As Christy indicated, the two Find a Grave memorials are already linked on the profile for Henagan: burial at 7775932 and cenotaph at 25830594. 

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On profiles it is often a practice to include several FindAGrave links to relatives. So I have to identify the one that is for the person of the profile. For Henagan I select only one of the links that is most likely correct one. I don't think I will change that, since it will cause more troubles than benefits.

I am looking into multiple Cemetery Categories on a profile and I think I will be able to include that in the report.

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I think it's already visible in the https://wikitree.sdms.si/Categories/WikiTreeCemeteries/OthersMultipleCategoriesSmall.htm report. That's what I was referring to, I think. I'm questioning whether we want it to be visible there when a profile is intentionally put into two different cemetery categories in cases like this. At the top of the https://wikitree.sdms.si/Categories/FindAGraveCemeteries/AfricaMultipleCemeteriesSmall.htm report you linked to, it says "Lists all FindAGrave Cemeteries with wikitree profiles and multiple WikiTree categories linked to a single cemetery. Usually a profile is in wrong category." My impression is that the usefulness of this report in particular would be to correct the cemetery category when a profile is in the wrong category. If the profile is intentionally put in multiple cemetery categories because there's an actual burial in one cemetery and a cenotaph at another cemetery, I would think we would want it excluded from this report because we wouldn't want people wasting time visiting these profiles to determine if it's intentional or if there's a mistake that needs to be corrected.

For what it's worth, it looks like FindAGrave has instructions for how to handle cenotaphs here, although my guess would be that those directions aren't always followed.

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@Christy, yes, having contributed to Find A Grave, I knew about the cenotaphs, though I've never used it.

I've look at the reports and found that it's sort of "case-by-case" to figure out what's going on with any particular profile. I edited a dozen or so profiles from a Find a Grave cemetery merge (I requested this merge in FAG but it took several years for them to actually merge it!) Anyway, they all had the pre-merge cemetery category, so the profiles were grouped in the wrong category.

I've also seen profiles with a source citation for one cemetery, but the wrong category is tagged. I've edited a few of those.

Anyway, these reports will require quite a lot of attention and time. Correcting 15 profiles took me 37 minutes (by the times in my contributions list.)

Also, just worked two Ohio cemeteries in the cemetery categories list and it took me almost 2 hours. Of course, I fixed other errors in the profiles and added sources to some of them that had ONLY the find a grave memorial as a source. This will be an "occasional" endeavor. LOL.

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@Natalie, I'm with you with these being a somewhat time-consuming, occasional project, especially the Multiple Cemeteries ones. That's why I think it would be good to weed out the cenotaphs from the reports if we can! But they do seem like they will be very useful.

I never knew about the FindAGrave cenotaphs process - just found it last night while going down this rabbit hole.

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I found two FindAGrave cemeteries at the same location. I’m assuming one cemetery is a distinct category of the more general cemetery. Can I add both FindAGrave cemeteries IDs to the single WikiTree category? I thinking I can at least explain that FindAGrave has two cemeteries for the one location on the category page.

Answer 5

I thought I'd have a quick look to see if there was anything I could do to help. On the first list England; Unlinked Categories small i found Darby-1258 in Broseley in Shropshire. I know this burial ground, I walk past it regularly with my dog.

I've updated Darby-1258 with find a grave ID and also updated the burial ground with find a grave cemetery ID. Please could someone check what I have done is correct and also, is that all that needs to be done to remove them from the list.

Thanks Hazel

Answer 6

A question; if someone adds a Find a Grave link to a profile but does not add it to the Cemetery category that already exists in WT and is linked to Find a Grave.

Is there a report I can use that will list the profile IDs that should be added to the category?

I am working on names that had a Find a Grave link but were not in the cemetery category. Then thought what if other additional profiles had the link added but were not in the category.

Thanks

Comments

Those are clearly visible on FindAGrave Cemeteries report in group Partial Cemeteries

In tables there is a 

Category:	No Category

 

entry that lists profiles that should be in the listed category.

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Thank you! I knew I had found the report last week, but couldn't remember where.

Answer 7

I thought, why not? So, I pulled up the FindAGrave Cemeteries report. It's overwhelming. So, I thought, take one bite. So, I went to North Carolina, then to Chatham County. In  Missing Cemeteries Small there are 170. So, I thought, take the big ones first. But, for each Cemetery Category that I would create, I would have to edit dozens of profile to add the category after I've created it.

Is there no way to automate adding the profiles to a category once it's been created? If not, the workload involved in doing one cemetery is massive.

UPDATE: I added Loves Creek Baptist Church Cemetery in Siler City, North Carolina and edited all 108 of the profiles to add the category to them.

This is a massive undertaking.

2nd UPDATE: These categories for Chatham County are now completed.

• Missing Cemeteries Big - 1 cemeteries (108 memorials)
• Unlinked Cemeteries Small - 6 cemeteries (151 memorials)
• Multiple Cemeteries Small - 3 cemeteries (81 memorials)

Comments

I ran into the same problem, Paul. So what I am doing is going to all the "local" (here around Auburn, Alabama) cemeteries that I know for sure where they are at and making sure they are all linked first.

 Then, I am adding missing cemeteries that my relatives are at. Which are most of my local cemeteries.

After I did that, I am now working on just one county at a time near me. Doing the same thing.

My though process was if I make sure all my local cemeteries are linked then when folk realize they can put a cemetery category, it will be there. Then maybe they will work on their profiles and it will help with the partial cemeteries.

Sheila

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I made a massive effort in the last 2 weeks to improve the numbers for Worcester County, Massachusetts, and thought I would leave some remarks here:

• Some numbers have gotten much worse, e.g. Complete Small Cemeteries down 12 with 518 less profiles. I wish I had save each page each time it changed so I could figure out what was going on here. Are the previous reports accessible?
• Its' a moving target, with slow updates to the reports, so be prepared to never be done, but its' worth doing if others learn to add the category when they add a findagrave.
• I ran into profiles with photos, which is better than findagrave, but I added the findagrave anyway to support the category. I almost felt like apologizing.
• Realized that the cenotaph thing will prevent many cemeteries from reaching the "complete" list.
• Realized that private profiles will keep many cemeteries from reaching the "complete" list. I started off leaving a comment instead, but stopped, which leads me to my last impression:
• I got an email from a PM, stating that certain families had been targetted by grave vandals, so they were scrubbing the profiles of location information and categories. Hard to do and include the findagrave link/ID which puts that information one step away, but they were doing what they could. This depressed me greatly. Now I do not touch private profiles at all. Interestingly, I also ran into a few findagrave's that had been removed (not merged, removed), and that made me wonder if findagrave was being pressured by families in these cases to take down the information.

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Requesting changes to findagrave report:

• Could the memorial counts for partial cemeteries reflect only those that do not have the category? That way if a findagrave is added to a profile without the category there would only be 1 memorial moved from complete to partial instead of the total number from the category. I believe this would more accurately reflect the state.
• Could non-open profiles be removed from the count, or counted separately? If not, could you mark them somehow so that they don't need to get revisited over and over?
• Could findagrave cemeteries with only 1 memorial be removed? If "a few" ever gets defined, use that.

Answer 8

I have started work on the BC cemeteries.

Answer 9

For my needs the best source for accuracy and most complete information are NY State Death Certificates which commenced about 1881.  In addition to cause and particulars of death they show name and (usually) location of cemetery and date of burial, and sometimes the funeral home name.  Personally I now dislike Find-A-Grave because (1) a person who went thru an entire cemetery taking photos and filed each on Find-A-Grave became manager's of all those listings. So one must hope that manager is still alive and get his/her permission to amend or take ownership of the page.  (2) Anyone who takes a photo of a grave plot or otherwise may, without permission, attach their photo(s) to a person's page you manage.

Answer 10

I missed this one - this is truly an amazing tool!

Answer 11

I went to go look at Oklahoma tonight, as the Bryan county ones interest me, However there is no county break up for Oklahoma like there is for the other states.  Is it possible to separate theirs out?

Comments

Aleš may have a solution within this view of the reports, but you can also go to the category for Bryan County cemeteries, then go to each individual cemetery category there. In the info box, this line links to these reports for that individual cemetery: 

WikiTree+ Report:

Detailed report on profiles and related FG cemeteries

You can only see reports for one cemetery at a time with this method, but you won't have to search through all the other Oklahoma cemeteries from other counties.

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Split by county is done automatically.

In Cemeteries report the limit is 40. I counted 35 cemeteries in the reports. So once a few more are added, it will be separated. But the reports are sorted by county, so they are all together.

In FindAGrave report the split is 100 as I remember.

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Ok I'll try again, I kept getting server time outs last night trying to go into the Oklahoma ones and thought it might be too many at once with the whole state being displayed .

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Nope. We had hardware problems over the weekend and today WT+ server died.

Now things are working on a temporary computer until we get a new one.