Cemetery Transcription ~ Getting Started

Starting a cemetery transcription seems to also involve a few false starts....
Enthusiasm bounds forth prior to logic setting in.

Where do you start?
How do you keep track of what you are doing?
What information should you collect?
Who are you collecting for?
And, could you please set a schedule for the sprinklers?!

I found the Oregon Gravestones project and thought, what a good thing for me to do - to get me out of the house.... thinking I would be working locally, I signed up! Then, I was told someone else was doing the cemetery I was planning on. It's not like there is only one cemetery around - and that goes for everywhere. I thought, I'll do the old Pioneer cemetery in Terrebonne.

It's funny, you begin with a certain perception and it all gets stopped when you realize that nothing is as you thought it would be!

First, I thought it would take no time at all to whip through this small cemetery - HA! Since I am also taking pictures, this is far more time consuming than I ever dreamed. I didn't start in a terribly logical manner either - unusual for me and proving that I didn't really know what to expect. Wandering through and reading headstones was far different than recording information, cleaning the headstone and taking pictures. So far, a good day's work is 50 stones.

Then, I come home, enter the information on the transcription list - upload the photos, crop and re-size them - check for obituaries online - enter the information and download the photos to the data bases I am working with. HOURS!

I'm generating a lot of paper. I don't much like that, but I need the paper until it is in the data bases.

The thing I did expect was how some gravestones just reach out to you and say - don't you wish you knew more about me? And, for the most part, one can only imagine!