Many of you participated for our “Save or Graves” weekend, many thanks to all of you! Spotlight on this project and its participants around the world.
Tombstones and the names, dates, and other inscriptions on them will disappear someday. This is often sooner rather than later in Europe, where crowded cemeteries and churchyards lease expired grave plots to other families every day. To save this essential heritage and enable everyone to locate the tombs of ancestors, Geneanet launched in 2014 the “Save our Graves” project. The goal? To photograph the headstones and inscriptions on them, then to put them online at Geneanet where they are indexed and freely available to all. Thanks to you, more than 5 million graves have been saved!
Since together we are stronger, we asked you, from May 12th through 14th, to participate in our “Save our Graves” weekend. Thousands of you answered our call, and more than 97,000 photos of graves from 25 countries were uploaded to Geneanet. Bravo and thank you to all of our participants!
Were you unable to participate last weekend? Rest assured, the project continues throughout the year. This page has the the relevant information: https://en.geneanet.org/a-cemetery-for-posterity
You can also, from your home, participate in indexing uploaded grave photos, by selecting “Graves” in our collaborative indexing tool: https://en.geneanet.org/indexation/
If you are an active participant in the “Save our Graves” project, or if you have made a major discovery thanks to it, let us know in the comments, mentioning where you have been taking photos.
Perhaps you haven’t previously participated in “Save our Graves”? Watch our video about it:
Some of you have contacted us to report that the Save our Graves mobile app was not compatible with the latest Android versions. This issue has been fixed and an update to the mobile app is now available. Thank you for your understanding.
5/19/23
This is an excellent project. Anthony raises something that is quite concerning for genealogists. I live in a small town in South Africa, and it is dangerous to visit grave-sites, as people are often attacked, but if like-minded people go in groups it can be done. I didn’t know about this initiative. Thank you so much. I plan on joining in.
5/19/23
Please forgive a newbie comment.
Our local Crem offers markers in the gardens for 10 years at a time. There is a book of remembrance but that is only rarely used these days and I have no idea how often the book is changed.
My question is, is there any system in place to capture the photos and transcription of either of these markers. As cremations increase instead of burial, could this be a future loss of information?
Tony Addison
Answer from Geneanet: This is a great question! The answer is, it depends on the cemetery/crematorium. Perhaps some do; likely, many don’t. This is why we call our project Save our Graves: many of the photos uploaded to Geneanet are of graves that have by now been renewed, are no longer there. Grave leases are often 30 years, but crematoriums indeed often have shorter leases. If you have photos, please consider contributing!