Learning More About Holy Trinity

My third expedition to Holy Trinity on August 25th turned into more than just a photo opportunity and checking my drafted churchyard map.

The previous night, Mom had gotten a phone call from Barbara Beck who is a member of the Prince Albert genealogical chapter that deals with the society's cemetery records. She was calling to inquire if Mom would go to Holy Trinity at 10:00 am as she was visiting with Dan Johnston to locate his grandfather's grave once again to mark the area where he will be erecting a gravestone shortly.

With school staring this week my Mom was unable to go but offered me happily in her place. So already having drafted a copy of the churchyard map onto my computer, I spent the morning sketching out a rough map on graph paper to detail new graves and check the existing map with the grave marker locations.

This is where it got confusing.

I knew previously, from Gerald Ernst who provided the churchyard map I was working from, that the plot arrangement had been more recent then the first burials so the churchyard isn't perfectly regimented. When first grave hunting with Dan Johnston, Art Jones, and Mom on June 7th we hunters had come to the conclusion based on tombstone location that lots 28, 29, and 30 had to be shifted one over so that lot 28 was in 29, 29 in 30, and 30 in 31.

I learned today that decision may be erroneous from Ron[ald] and Shelia (Wright) Mason, who joined Dan, Barbara -- and myself with their copy of the cemetery map and photocopies of the Synod office burial records -- that some years ago they moved all markers to disc the churchyard to level it off. So the tombstones predating that levelling might be in the wrong locations.

So, for example, though Tekla G. Viklund's gravestone is physically in the walkway between lots 28 and 29 her actual grave might very well be in plot 1 of lot 28.

Mason's familiarity with Holy Trinity comes from Shelia's father, Herb[bert G.] Wright, being responsible for the cemetery's upkeep in the past and has now passed onto them. As well as having an extensive amount of family buried in the cemetery already: grandparents, parents, sons, niece, and cousin.

So back to the issue of an accurate churchyard map. What would be best (beside ground penetrating radar being used of course, a rod to locate the graves, or backhoe to scrape the sod off to locate the grave shafts) would be to map the current plot locations and indicate all gravestone locations where they lie. Publisher and Excel don't allow for a quick method of doing that though (Barbara drafted her map in Publisher, I did mine in Excel), so it would be best to get out there with stakes, graphing paper, measuring tape, and string and draw everything. Afterwords it can be scanned in and 'computerized'.

Something fun to do in the future. But it might have to wait until much later as there are more cemeteries that I want to get to transcribe before the snow flies. I also got some genealogical society transcribers forms from Barbara and am quite looking froward to using them and seeing how they work out. I also learned that they aren't interested in inscriptions like "At rest" being recorded but information about the individual itself, something like "neé Someone, wife of Somebody" or marriage date if indicated. And with double tombstones, use only one space on the SGS form.

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Edit: 29-Aug-2009. Added Shelia Mason's maiden name and name of father to entry.