The Wicomico Cemeteries Project

The Wicomico Cemeteries Project - How to Submit

HOW TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE WCP

The Wicomico Cemeteries Project is consistently one of the most popular and helpful areas of this web site, due to our many dedicated and generous cemetery transcribers who walk the little area graveyards and larger church cemeteries and record the information found on the stones.

If you would like to join this group of highly appreciated volunteers, let me first thank you for your willingness to share your time to accomplish this important task. As more and more of these little family plots are swallowed up by overgrowth of vegetation, plowed under by farmers, steamrolled over by developers, sometimes it ends up that these transcriptions, lovingly recorded by someone who understands their importance, are all that are left behind.

Please read over the following guidelines before submitting your cemetery data . . .

TRANSCRIPTION FORMAT:

Begin your cemetery transcription with a paragraph describing the location and condition of the graveyard, in sufficient detail that a visitor unfamiliar with the area would be able to find it without too much difficulty. Describe the current condition of the cemetery as you found it. Was it well-tended? Overgrown? Nearly inaccessible?

As much as possible, try to adhere to the following when listing the information from the gravestones:

Capitalize surnames and use initial caps for proper names (ie John SMITH).
Abbreviate the word "born" as lower-case "b." and "died" as lower-case "d.".
When specific dates of birth and/or death are given, use written-out month names (or abbreviations) in standard format, rather than month numbers (ie "Jan. 15, 1868" and NOT 1/15/1868).
Separate the name and dates with commas (ie John SMITH, b. 1812, d. 1841)
If only years of birth and death are given, please record with "space-dash-space" in between the 4-digit years (ie 1828 - 1901).
Include any relationship data given on the stone (ie "wife of . . .").
Include any military or fraternal organization information, too (ie "Md. PFC Army World War II").
When age at death is given, include it, and spell out or abbreviate the words "years" ("yrs."), "months" ("mos.") and "days" ("ds.").
It is not necessary to include epitaphs, but you may if you wish.

Some examples of well-formatted entries (taken from the Bivalve UMC listing) would be:

Milton E. LARMORE, son of William and Roberta, b. Dec. 3, 1881, d. Jun. 25, 1895
Valentine INSLEY, 1834 - 1928
Susan WILLING, wife of James A., d. Aug. 15, 1888, aged 59 years, 11 months, 7 days
Carl Lee WALTER, Md. CSPS USNR World War I & II, 1896 - 1959
Matthew A. HORSMAN, b. Dec. 10, 1859, d. Apr. 5, 1930

FILE FORMAT:

Your transcription should be saved as a plain text file. Please do not use spreadsheet, database, table, or delimited file formatting.

SUBMITTING:

When you're ready to submit a cemetery transcription, please send it as a plain text file attachment (*.txt) to wicomicomd@tyaskin.com.

Your transcription will be converted to html format and uploaded to the WCP web site, and a copy of the plain text file will also be submitted to The USGenWeb Archives, where it will be accessible for free by all Wicomico researchers.

This Cemetery Project is associated with Handley's Eastern Shore Genealogy Project, and with the Wicomico County, Maryland USGenWeb Project site.

Return to Wicomico Cemeteries Main Listing Back to Handley's Eastern Shore MD Genealogy. Back to the Wicomico Co., MD USGenWeb Project.