If you are interested in helping - please email me at kersteagle@gmail.com. You don't have to live near me to help! You can help me by typing up the information on the headstones once they are uploaded onto the BillionGraves website. If you would like to help, please contact me by email. Keep track of your transcribing hours by filling out this form here.
Volunteers for my Eagle Scout Project will be meeting at our local cemetery - Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens at 6601 S. Colorado Blvd, Centennial - on Saturday, July 26 from 8-10 am and also 5-7 pm. We will also be meeting at the same cemetery on Saturday, Aug 9 from 8-10 am and also 5-7 pm.
Please bring your smart phone with the BillionGraves free app loaded. I will give you the login and password so that I can keep track of the progress of taking the photographs and also transcribing them. Also, please bring a broom or gas leaf blower to clean off the headstones. Umbrellas are also needed to provide shade for the headstones. The shaded headstone pictures turn out much better than the ones that are not shaded.
Here is a picture of the cemetery before my Eagle Project. Another Eagle Scout did their project in this cemetery. You can see in this picture the two photos I took to experiment with the free app and to learn how to transcribe the pictures. It is really easy!
Here is a picture of the cemetery after I got my project approved. I took my mom, my cousins and my aunt to the cemetery to take pictures of the first headstone in each of the rows. The markers are green because they have not been transcribed yet.
I had family come into town for my little brother's baptism. My family volunteered on July 5 to take pictures of the cemetery. We took right around 900 pictures in 1 1/2 hours! You can see the green tags from the picture are now yellow thanks to some family and friends that worked on transcribing them. There are a lot more to do now ... and even more to do after July 26 and Aug 9.
This has been an exciting project for me because family is very important to me. I like the idea of being able to help others link to their ancestors. I have ancestors buried across the United States and in Europe. It would be neat to have their headstones documented in the future as well. I hope I am helping someone out there find their relatives.
