Doing Some Volunteer Work During The Holidays

During the holiday season, my mom and I always go searching for a volunteer project that we can take on to better someone's life or community. In the past we've done "adopt a family", where we buy presents for everyone in a low income family, sometimes we even make them a meal and buy them a tree. Other years we've made cookies for our local Boys and Girls Club (That was a 3 day affair of cookie making!).

Every year for the past two years however, I've been trying to find something that relates to genealogy. In the past I've done free look ups or helped people with their brick walls. But this year - I am not only putting a genealogy twist to it, but a cemetery twist too.

This year, I am going to go out and transcribe a small local cemetery with a friend of mine. Once I've done this, I will organize it into a small book that gives pictures, a general map of the cemetery, and a brief local history of the area. Then I will give the book to many of the local libraries in the area and the county, while also creating a website where that lists all the information in the book.

Mind you - this is no small task and will certainly take a lot of effort and time. But these days, the smallest things can brighten up our world. I'm sure someone out there will need the information.



So I call on all of you to find a cool way to volunteer for the genealogy world but with a cemetery twist. I've made a quick list of some ideas to get you started, but certainly anything you come up with will be pretty cool.

1. Maybe you own a lawn mower and you don't mind cutting grass for a underkept cemetery. You could then go down there and make it look so much nicer while also making it easier to read all the stones and markers.


2. Maybe you are a great photographer - you could volunteer to take pictures of your local cemeteries and send them to your local genealogical society or put them on a website.


3. Do what I am doing - make a transcription and publish it.


4. I find this to be extremely sweet: Clean up any dead flowers around the stones and then place a fresh flower on there.

Whatever you decide to do this holiday season - I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a line to let me know!

Access Genealogy - A FREE Website of Tennessee Cemetery Transcriptions

As I was searching the web today, I found a website that held transcriptions to cemeteries in Tennessee. This site is not just helpful when it comes to Eastern Tennessee - but the entire state.

Cemeteries are organized first by county (with one category for national cemeteries in Tennessee), then by cemetery name.

The transciptions are all done by volunteers and most of the indexes are complete (or were when they were transcribed).

I suggest that if you need to find where an ancestor is buried and you have a good idea of where the ancestor died, you might want to head over and check it out.