Considerations for Cemetery Editing
With spooky season upon us and Halloween right around the corner, you might find yourself becoming more interested in editing cemeteries than other structure types!
You might also be drawn to cemeteries because so many of them were edited three or more years ago and made up a large chunk of the yellow point population. However, unlike other features such as EMS stations and schools, cemeteries are extremely unlikely to permanently close or move locations which is why we’ve decided to exclude them from being marked for a recheck every three years. You will no longer see cemeteries with a yellow border.
We have several volunteers who have been devoted exclusively to cemetery verification through ground truthing (in-person verification) and in-depth research consulting authoritative historical documents and information published by historical and genealogical societies (check out the Cemetery Guidance and Volunteer Contributions section on the right to read more about their methodologies). Their work has been especially helpful in verifying older cemeteries that might be overgrown and difficult, if not impossible, to locate via aerial imagery alone. We would hate to see this hard work and quality data compromised, so before making any changes to a previously edited cemetery point, consider these important reminders:
- Carefully review a cemetery’s edit history. If you see a note explaining that a cemetery’s location was verified in person, or that a historical document, society, or other local authoritative source of information was cited, then you can most likely trust that the point's location and attributes are accurate and you do not need to make changes to that point.
- While we do generally consider Find a Grave to be an authoritative source, it is not infallible. You should still use caution when using it to justify changes to a point, especially because the locations they have marked are not always accurate. Any changes made to a point based on ground truthing or consultation with local authoritative historical information should take precedence over information sourced from Find a Grave (including cemetery names). If you encounter a point that has been field checked, but its location in the imagery does not exactly match up with the location marked in Find a Grave, DO NOT update the point to match what is in Find a Grave. A field-checked location will always trump location information documented online.
- When researching cemeteries whose locations are difficult to verify, it’s good practice to consult multiple authoritative imagery sources.
