NBC17 out of Johnston County, NC reports that all Johnston County land record books back to the mid-1700s are scanned in and now searchable online, at the Register of Deeds office website...

http://www.johnstonnc.com/registerofdeeds

All vital records, which include marriages, births and deaths have been digitized since 2003. Land records from 1940 to 1988 were digitized in 2005. Birth and death images date back to 1913 and marriage images date back to the 1700s, with some of these records being marriage bonds.

Labels: North-Carolina-Genealogy

One of our visitors submitted the following e-mail to me today regarding a cemetery in the UK that was recently cleared away for road construction...

My name is Alfred, first I wish to thank you for a excellent site which I use every day for both Australia and now the UK your site has saved me countless hours of traveling in Australia and now as I live in Australia I cannot get to the UK can you tell me when Middlesex, London and Northamptonshire are likely to come online.

I recall a incident that I had on a visit to the UK after not knowing where they where buried until I reached 60 years of age to locate my mother and both sets of grand parents at Kensal Green cemetery only to find that the cemetery operators had bulldozed a road to form a roundabout so traffic can turn around They had of course taken the top surface of a number of grave albeit paupers Grave and the small markers that told you who where buried there where just thrown into the bushes nearby so as you can gather my total disgust at this and even more so after sending in writing a protest to the UK Government and told by them that they had no control over this as Kensal Green was a privately owned company I thought you could not desecrate any grave.

So this would be one of the problems you must come across.

Thank you once again for a brilliant site and keep up the good work and hope to hear from you soon.

Alf.

As to his first question, we don't target specific counties to publish transcriptions in. Rather, if someone sends us a transcription for a cemetery in that county, we'll publish it. So, it all depends on what material people send to us.

As for this cemetery being paved over, it's always a shame to hear of such things. And in fact that's a reason why websites like ours exist, to preserve the information in electronic form in the event of such development.

In the 1930s, the US Government created something called the "Works Progress Administration", otherwise known as the "WPA". It was during the time of the Great Depression, when millions of Americans were without work. The government gave them all jobs. Within the WPA there was a division called the "Historical Records Survey", and believe it or not, this included an effort to preserve abandoned cemeteries in written record.

I ran across microfilms of their work, and read the descriptions they recorded. And this was back in the 1930s, describing cemeteries dating back to the early 1800s, and even late 1700s. They walked through thick brush, and cleared off old tombstones, many of which had been unreadable at that time.

So even as far back as 70 years ago, people had searched for abandoned graveyards in an attempt to preserve them for future researchers.

We continue to receive e-mail asking why we won't make corrections to errors in transcriptions.

Please take a look at my previous article on this topic...

http://www.interment.net/column/2006/02/our-policy-on-correcting-errors.html

The most important point is that transcriptions are not meant to be "open documents" where the public, or even ourselves, are allowed to make corrections. Rather it's a snapshot of someone's effort to record information they found elsewhere.

A genealogist wants to know what was recorded on a tombstone, or in a sexton's records. That's another important reason why we don't make error changes.

It could be that the tombstone is inscribed with errors, or the sexton's records contains errors. Even if you know that information is incorrect, the genealogist still wants to see what information is out there, correct or incorrect, and then decide what information to rely on.

We are trying to support exactly that. To let the genealogist decide. That's why we don't allow anyone else to make corrections to these transcriptions.

Now, typing errors is a different matter. But it's not possible for us to determine what is a typing error versus incorrect information from a tombstone or sexton record. Hence, we need the author of the transcription to advise. So when you notify us of an error, we contact that author, and let them decide. If that author feels he or she transcribed the information accurately, then we'll leave the transcription alone.

But what if the author doesn't respond to our inquiry? It could be he or she has since changed their e-mail address and has not informed us of the change. We've also had many authors pass away since their last contact with us. In that case, we need proof it was a typing error, and not an error on the original record.

I realize that if you saw your mother's burial info on this website, and noticed incorrect information, it becomes an emotional issue. But remember that Interment.net was not meant to memorialize the deceased, rather it's meant to be a genealogical reference.

So please keep in mind proper genealogical protocol, which is to transcribe records character-for-character, and not add editorial modification.

I set up a feature where you subscribe to our RSS Feeds via e-mail. (Click here).

Whenever we update our "What's New" page, or our blog, you can have an e-mail sent to you to let you know about it.

The e-mail will contain the actual content so that you can see what new cemeteries are now online, or what new articles I've posted on this blog.

It's a free service.

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of the e-mail.

The e-mail service is powered by Feedburner. In fact when you subscribe you'll see their page pop up.

Arrived at Zion NP around 4:30pm. Mostly good weather the way up, but had some gusts. Right now we are sitting around the fire drinking beer and 12 year old Scotch. Ate a pack of hot links. Folks have digressed to bitching about OBAMA.

Temps are getting cold right now.

I plan to stay up all night long and party out in preparation for a long cold day of riding tomorrow.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

So what do you think about the new homepage?

Like it? Cleaner? Or just different?

Just a note to say that this Saturday I'll be heading out on a four-day motorcycle camping trip from here in southern California to Utah.
Every Easter week me and my buddies do some kind extended motorcycle trip, to get away from the madness of the city, and to get some freedom of the open road.
I tried to get done as much as I could with Interment over the past couple weeks, before I take off.
But I won't be too far away. I decided to get the new Blackberry Storm 9530 to see how well I can stay connected.
In fact I'm writing this on the Blackberry.
Of course when us go riding, we go into places where there's no network access. So we'll see what happens.
If I can, I'll post daily update here.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry