Virtual Cemeteries

This is an entry for the Ecotone Wiki’s joint blogging topic on Cemeteries and Place.

Not far from where we live, down the road past fields and out to the east, is the Tremont Street Cemetery, an idyllic little rural cemetery with the interments starting from the 1870s. It’s a good destination for a short bicycle ride from here. None of our ancestors are buried there. In idle moments, we entertain the thought of transcribing the gravestones there so that genealogists from elsewhere might be able to look up information about deceased relatives online.

We dabble in genealogy and too have benefited from online cemetery transcription projects. In virtual explorations of my ancestral roots in Lorain County, Ohio, I came across this page of Lorain County cemetery transcriptions, and found maybe a dozen relatives listed in the publication. It’s not as gratifying as making a gravestone rubbing, but visiting an ancestor’s virtual cemetery is still a form of homage.