Canadian Headstones is a project to capture digital images and the complete transcription of cemetery stones. It is a web-based Canadian non-profit corporation run completely by volunteers.

History

Jim McKane began his genealogical quest in the early 1970s, when his father convinced him to become the custodian of the pedigree for his Lyons Clan Reunion in

Chinguacousy Township Chinguacousy Township is a former municipality and present-day geographic township in the Regional Municipality of Peel, Ontario, Canada. In 1973, when Peel County became the Regional Municipality of Peel, the township was split in half, with t ...

, Peel County,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. In April 2009, while volunteering as assistant webmaster of a website, he found a website archiving headstones for those who were born in

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six Counties of Northern Ireland, counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional Counties of Ireland, counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an admini ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

, the home of his ancestors. Realizing the value of the information to genealogists and family historians, he set out to research the possibility of creating an archive for Canadian headstones. While there were a number of websites storing photos of gravestones, none also included the inscriptions on the gravestones. The majority of existing sites also had either no search engine feature or very poorly constructed search features. The result was the creation on 1 July 2009 of CanadianHeadstones.com. The

bylaw A by-law (bye-law, by(e)law, by(e) law), or as it is most commonly known in the United States bylaws, is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authorit ...

s of Canadian Headstones state that the purpose of the corporation is: the corporation shall gather, archive, publish and disseminate genealogical, historical data or other records of interest to family historians,

genealogists Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

or other researchers.

Use

Canadian Headstones relies on volunteers, including genealogy enthusiasts, to upload photos. The site steps a contributor through uploading a photo, editing it, choosing a county and cemetery, entering the names and inscription. It is then checked by a coordinator who assists the contributor to fix any problems. The site also uses a

soundex Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling. The algorithm mainly enc ...

system to allow searches for sound-alike names, to account for spelling variations, typos in entries or degraded quality of older headstones. The section of the site devoted to

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

is available in both French and English.

Records

By 2012, CanadianHeadstones.com had 348,000 records submitted to the site and was growing at a rate of 10,000 entries per month. By 2015, the site had more than 1 million records. The website includes a subproject to photograph gravestones of Canadian soldiers buried in cemeteries abroad, with more than 1,000 graves photographed by January 2015. The site also documented Halifax Memorial at Nova Scotia's

Point Pleasant Park Point Pleasant Park is a large, mainly forested municipal park at the southern tip of the Halifax peninsula. It once hosted several artillery batteries, and still contains the Prince of Wales Tower - the oldest Martello tower in North America ( ...

, devoted to the Canadian sailors who died during World Wars I and II, with close-up photos of all the panels with the names of the soldiers.

References

External links

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Canadian Headstones Genealogical societies Internet properties established in 2009 Cemeteries in Canada Historic preservation organizations in Canada Online person databases

History

Use

Records

See also

References

External links