Cemetery V2.0

By Steve Johnson, December 23, 2001

If you are a genealogist, and you have a handheld computer running the Palm OS, you will want to get a copy of Cemetery V2.0 to add to your collection of genealogy applications.

The Name Index screen

The Deceased Details screen

The Cemetery Details screen

The Tombstone Inscription screen. The camera icon at the bottom-left will display the Photograph Details screen

The Photograph Details screen

Cemetery V2.0 is supported on color versions of the Palm OS

Cemetery V2.0 is a database application designed to collect records from cemeteries. If you often find yourself walking through cemeteries to find ancestors and relatives, you can use this application to jot down information from tombstones. In fact, you don't even need to visit a cemetery to use it. If you find a cemetery transcription in a library or online, you can store info into it just as well.

The application has two main screens: 1. Name Index, and 2. Deceased Details.

All information is entered into the Deceased Details. You can specify the full name, the cemetery details, burial location, tombstone inscription, and photograph information.

For each cemetery, you can specify the full cemetery name, address, phone number, city, county, and state.

The tombstone inscription screen allows you to jot down the inscription as it appears on the tombstone. There is also a feature to record notes pertaining to any photographs you might have taken.

Cemetery V2.0 is an example of what I refer to as "mobile genealogy", and it's what I think genealogists should be moving towards. In the old days, when we visited a cemetery, or a library, or a court house, we had to rely on paper, either writing notes into a pad of paper, or making lots of photocopies.

What good is having all that expensive genealogy software sitting on your PC at home, when you need it with you at the library? The handheld computer allows the genealogist to bring all their research and genealogy with them, and record new information on the spot. That's what Cemetery V2.0 provides you. That's what I call "21st Century Genealogy".

To those persons interested in creating cemetery transcriptions, Cemetery V2.0 will not provide much help simply because it does not have an export feature. It does backup its data on to your PC during a sync, but you cannot convert that data into a format that can be used in other applications. Perhaps a future version will provide this.

Cemetery V2.0 costs only $10.00, which I think is quite a bargain simply because it gives the genealogist freedom and power. You have freedom in that you don't need to hang on to a pad of paper and pencil when venturing out to a cemetery, and it gives you power because you have all those cemetery records with you when you conduct your research away from home.

Cemetery V2.0 runs on the Palm Operating System, supported by handheld computers such as the Palm, Handspring Visor, Sony Clie, and others.

You can download a copy of Cemetery V2.0 from its website at: http://keifferusa.com/.

- Steve Paul Johnson

Genealogy Links