Devon Headstone Links

It's been rather a while since I put anything up, so I thought I should get on with it.

I have found a few useful links of headstones in Devon

• Devon Headstones - an alphabetical list of individuals and the inscriptions of the photographed headstones.  Pictures can be ordered by contacting the site owner here.
• Of the Parish, a collection of photographs of from the City of Plymouth.  Headstone details and small, watermarked images are available online, but prints can be purchased too.
• The Gravestone Photographic Resources project, specifically the section on Devon.
• Tollhouse Allan's Devon Gravestone Set on Flickr, with about 100 pictures, but in no particular order.

Billion Graves does not appear to have any photos from Devon, and FindaGrave has no way to sort graves by county.

Finally, searches for phrases like "Devon Headstone/Tombstone/Gravestone..." will turn up large numbers of sites with small sets of photos that are of interest to the researcher who put them up.  Don't forget to search by placename as well.

So You've Decided to Visit a Cemetery

So You've Decided to Visit a Cemetery. Congratulations. No doubt you're all aquiver with anticipation of what you will find, expecting all sorts of good things. Not so fast! Before you go there are a few things you should do, or seriously consider doing, and/or bring.

1. A camera
• if you are sufficiently skilled bring UV and infra-red filters. I have never tried it but I suspect it would help to read some of the more eroded inscriptions.
  
2. A soft paint brush.
3. A plastic trowel.
4. Some sort of probe, e.g. a hand held weed digger.
• be extremely careful with this. I only recommend it to help you locate ground level markers that are overgrown or sunken and if they are made of granite. If you suspect marble then use the plastic trowel and fingers to uncover the marker.
  
5. A spray bottle with lots of water both for cleaning, and to increase the contrast of carved and uncarved areas.
   
6. Paper and pen for notes (or your choice of handheld device).
7. Insect repellent.
8. If you are going to a cemetery that may not be well maintained then clippers for grass/small branches can help.
9. A GPS unit to mark exactly where your gravestones are so that you or other people can find the same headstone again.
   

Some things you should never do:

1. Never clean a headstone of attached moss or lichen. Marble is especially fragile, and taking off the moss/lichen can remove bits (large or small) of marble too.
2. Never re-attempt to assemble a headstone, you may chip the edges or otherwise damage it.
   
3. Don't use wire brushes to clean off loose dirt or debris.
4. Don't use any cleaner other than water. Even vinegar is an acid and can etch stone. Houshold cleaners and some soaps are worse.
   
5. Never use sand to clean any headstone.
6. Do not pry a headstone out of the ground, if there are hairline cracks, they can suddenly become less hairline, much to your regret.

When all is said and done, do no harm to the graveyard and headstones in it. If in doubt leave the headstone alone until you can find a willing archaeologist or conservator to help you.

You're all ready now. Have fun!

Reflections on Graveyards

If you are reading this, it is likely that you are interested in genealogy and family history, and that means that you have visited more than your fair share of graveyards.

Graveyards are a wonderful place to find information that is not otherwise easily discovered. If the person you are looking for died less than 75 years ago (at least in Ontario) you can ususally find a date of death, which in turn can lead to the obituary/death notice in the local paper, which can lead to the names of other family members, in-laws, etc. Often you will find family plots with the children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other in-laws all buried in close proximity.

Even information that is not there can be of assistance. Consider a headstone that has birth and death dates of the husband on it, but not that of the wife, or only the birth date of the wife, but not a death date, even if the wife must clearly be dead by now.

The assistance one can get at a graveyard varies wildly. Many rural cemeteries have no office, and the boards are not easy to contact. Cemeteries that are defunct or abandoned, whether rural or urban, almost never have assistance of any description. In the case of Ontario you can use the OCFA, or the OGS Ontario Cemetery Ancestor Search, but they do not cover every cemetery in the province, and rely on volunteers to transcribe microfilms of old records, which brings in a whole new area for errors to be made. The best bet for rural cemeteries is to simply wander among the gravestones until you find what you are looking for.

Urban cemeteries usually have offices, but the quality and hours of service vary wildly. I know of one group of cemeteries in Toronto where the operating company has decided that none of the offices will be open on weekends. Their records are also completely paper based. They are a 9 to 5 operation. The staff are not exactly the friendliest people in the world either. All in all my dealings with them have had a slight air of the surreal. Contrast that to another major cemetery group in Toronto where the records are computerized, the staff are friendly and helpful, and they have office hours at their sites on the weekends.

Many cemeteries, especially in rural areas, but also some in the cities, are in very bad condition. Headstones toppled through vandalism or neglect, botched restorations of headstones (Never, ever use iron/steel pins to put a headstone together again), encroaching vegetation. Old marble headstones are especially vulnerable to the elements and mistreatment.

If you do visit cemeteries, take pictures of the headstones, and then share them. There are many sites that allow you to upload or submit headstone photos: the CanadaGenWeb Cemetery Project, FindaGrave, Northern Ontario Canada Gravemarker Gallery, and the Gravestone Photographic Resource Project.

In the end, graveyards are both a source of joy and sadness for both family members, and for genealogists. Joy for finding the relationships, dates, and relatives you never knew, and sadness in the realization that someday we will all be there, with only a stone to mark our place, and sometimes not even that.