Questions I get regarding registration and cemetery transcriptions.

How do I register?

Send me an email with your name, name of cemetery and the county the cemetery is in. I will then put your name and email address on the County web page you specified as having adopted that cemetery. We don't want two of you transcribing the same cemetery!

How do I go about transcribing a cemetery?

The original idea behind the Tombstone Transcription Project was to record and put online all available records for all cemeteries.

People do different things depending on their available time, how involved they want to be and just what is important to them. It also depends on the size of the cemetery. Some cemeteries are so large there just is no way to transcribe the data so maybe you can do lookups and or take photos. Very close to me is the world’s largest in use cemetery with about 1,400 acres and almost 500,000 burials.

Some people are not able to walk the cemeteries to do transcriptions but are able to do individual look-ups. Some people walk the cemetery and transcribe everything on the tombstone; others just record names and dates. Sometimes we get lucky and find a transcription of a cemetery at the library that we can copy or a local genealogical society may have a transcription and will give permission to put that info on the web. You just need to check out the situation.

How do I send the transcription?

That's easy you just attach your data to the email you send me.

What format do I use?

Clarity is the primary goal for databases. To that end Data is best provided in one column rather than trying to fit it on one line. Example:

Name on tombstone
Date of Birth
Date of Death
Inscription

For double tombstones:

Name of husband Name of Wife
Date of Birth Date of Birth
Date of Death Date of Death
Other information
"Inscription"

When providing data, it is best to list the tombstone information in the same order that it was surveyed rather than placing the names in alpha order. This lets viewers know who was buried beside whom.

This date format is preferred but not manditory:
12/18/1907
3/13/1906
8/7/1907

More questions? Just give me a holler! sdonaldson@salisbury.net

Back to the North Carolina Tombstone Transcription Project