That which we call Rozilee / by any other name would sound as sweet

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
- Juliet, Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Scene II¹

Just sharing some Ancestry.ca indexing fun from the Canadian Census of the Prairie Provinces, 1916²:

Capture from the Canadian Census
of the Prairie Provinces, 1916.

It was interpreted by various indexers on Ancestry.ca in nine different ways (so far):

Royile
Royilee
Rogiles
Rayilee
Royilu
Royiles
Royiler
Royilce
Royilie

Ah, sweet smelling spelling—Rozilee!

Sources:
1. Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, Project Gutenberg HTMl version(http://www.gutenberg.org : accessed 3 February 2013).↩
2. Library and Archives Canada. Census of the Prairie Provinces, 1916. Digital image online. (http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1916/001100-119.02-e.php?&document_id_nbr=1119&page_sequence_nbr=1&interval=20&&PHPSESSID=binr4r307642js6q5i453mppv4 : accessed 3 February 2013.)↩

Spring Tidying

Today is the first day of spring according to the Georgian calendar and there's been a bit of tidying up going on behind the scenes with my computerized cemetery information and on this blog itself.

I am have wicked fun with Blogger in Draft template designer. (If you use Blogger I urge you to go have fun yourself!)

You may have noted the new pages beneath the masthead image called "Cemetery List" for collecting together the complete data relevant to each cemetery, and "Bookshelf" which lists book and article titles I have read that are related to cemeteries in some manner. More pages will be following in the future.

PDF documents containing data for Holy Trinity churchyard have been added to the MasterList page. I've been sitting on some information for Holy Trinity churchyard and Foxdale cemetery over the winter months and feel that they should "bud" their way onto the Internet like the spring flowers soon will be.

Depending if I get roped into house spring cleaning I might also get the Foxdale inscription record up today as well.

Visit to the Synod Office Archives

I arranged to visit the Diocese of Saskatchewan Synod Office for the Anglican Church to ask permission to view the burial record archives and copy the information.

I had no idea there was so many little things involved, not only in gaining permission to "publish" the information but how the information is kept. The Information Act only covers stuff before 1910, all my cemeteries are later on (I think) like Holy Trinity which was constructed in 1914.

I'll be writing a letter to the Diocese to see if I can publish the death dates, burial dates, where born, and late residence as well as name on this blog and in printouts that will be given to the researched churches, communities, and genealogical society.

That was also the only information that I was permitted to hand copy, nothing about cause of death but that isn't vitally important to me so of no real matter to my research. (Photocopying wasn't permitted.)

Although a cemetery, like Holy Trinity, may be Anglican they only have burial records for individuals that an Anglican minister preformed the burial service for. So that means that if a person was buried by a minister of a different church or community members if a minister wasn't available, that individual will not be in the Archive's registers.

Plus, a minister may serve one area but provide the service in another area an record the burial information in his 'home' area. To better explain, before Holy Trinity had it's own minister services were provided by the minister at the Sturgeon Lake Mission (Sturgeon Lake Indian Reserve #101) thus the data would be entered in the Sturgeon Lake Mission register not the Holy Trinity register.

Also, later on in the Holy Trinity register there was data for burials in Briarlea (St. Martin's Anglican Cemetery) as well as the two Wild Rose cemeteries that are community operated and not run by any religion.

And then there is the fact that register books aren't all organized the same, so while one book asks for birth, death, and burial dates another only has columns for death and burial dates.

Later I will be printing out what I typed up and taking it back to the Archives to confirm the information I copied to hopefully eliminate transcriber error. And as much as people bemoan archaic handwriting (and I fell I will fast be joining the ranks), I do have to say that I'm in love with Rev. Clayton's writing who served Holy Trinity from 1942 onward. He has very neat printing (yeah!) but slightly unusual due to the fact that his lowercase t's look like larger lowercase r's.

The Archives, once I've compiles everything, also intend to check my records against their computerized records to see if we all have the same thing.

But in any case, I enjoyed myself and look forward to my return visits. My only disappointment is learning that as the Anglican Church is a 'step' away from the Roman Catholic Church, other religiously affiliated cemeteries in my district, like St. Paul's Lutheran Cemetery of Deer Ridge may not have centralized archives like the Anglican Diocese to visit.

Documenting Information

I have come to the conclusion, after transcribing two cemeteries to this date, for a total of one hundred seven gravestones, that I need a better documenting system then I currently have.

I compile names, birth and death dates, marker description and inscription in an Excel spreadsheet.

Spatial location and grave number is recorded in a Excel spreadsheet, graph paper, and on the form I originally used to copy the gravestone inscription.

But that does not allow for the information that I uncover from the districts local history books or other sources, like the names of parents, siblings, spouses, offspring and other family relations. Important dates from when they were married, to when they migrated to Canada or simply into the area, to their burial date.

I need to create a catalogue of index cards (or something similar), one side with the marker information, the other side with the other learned information and most importantly, where the information came from. I'm thinking connecting the cards to envelops to hold hard copies of the grave site photographs and the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) printouts of the original documentation would also be a good idea. Time consuming, but as I'm already planning to OCR the entries in the history books for the Tombstone Tuesday memes it wouldn't mean more work.

I think I'm also going to start cards (or forms) for the cemeteries themselves, information about establishment, marker types, condition of graveyard, last burial, etc.

I already have two forms for transcribing and cemetery information, copied from Sharon Debartolo Carmack's Your Guide to Cemetery Research with slight adjustments to the later for markers prevalent in my area. I just need to get more file folders for my filling cabinet and be consistent in the data I collect and enter.

So with those thoughts for now, I leave you with a question. What have been the trials and tribulations of other transcribers in the beginning of their endeavours?

Learning on the Hunt

In a previous post I mentioned that some basic research went into the set up of this blog and how to actually proceed with a cemetery transcription. Some things that other people didn't mention/cover because they are already familiar with the entire process have presented some learning curves for me thought. Things that I thought I'd touch on.

First of all when photographing grave markers -- make sure to keep your toes out of the picture! Something I fell 'afoot' of on my first photo expedition and transcribing trip. It also gave me a few chuckles when I spotted the tip of a shoe on a photograph taken on a Boy Scout group for an Eagle Badge project on Names in Stone, an interactive cemetery on the web. (The story and project can be found in the site's 'News Room' tab.)

Multiple trips to Holy Trinity Anglican Cemetery is also allowing me to work out the kinks in my transcribing process. I've basically worked it out to: paper form for recording the grave marker inscriptions, systematic photo taking (grave site, "footer" if inscribed as wolf stones are popular markers in my area, headstone), and grid paper to mark down grave site locations for mapping to show spatial relation.

So while the transcriptions and maps are coming along nicely on my computer, I'm still not to sure how to post all the gathered data on the blog. (Besides linking to my forthcoming Flickr collection.) Turning the "Tombstone Tuesday" meme into a regular method of posting all grave markers and inscriptions is a possibility, but there are not enough Tuesdays in a year for all the markers which means I'd be posting far into the future.

Maybe by making a "Tombstone Thursday" meme I'd get more up quicker? Unless of course I want to keep it weekly so that this blog is active far into the future. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Your thoughts?