Project: Puerto Rico Cemeteries

Project:United_States Cemeteries

Welcome to the Puerto Rico Cemeteries Project, a subproject of the U.S. Cemeteries Project, which is itself a subproject of the Global Cemeteries Project!

Contents

Goals

The goals of the Puerto Rico Cemeteries Project are to:

  1. document the locations and historical background information of cemeteries within our state;
  2. place the profiles of our deceased ancestors with known burial information into the properly categorized cemeteries in which they were interred; and,
  3. use the information obtained from cemetery surveys (photographic and data gathering expeditions) as a starting point for creating new profiles for those of our ancestors for whom profiles have not yet been created on WikiTree.

Our "Cemeterists" seek to document the lives and times of our ancestors interred here for the benefit of all genealogists and family historians.

Participation

The temporary leader of the Puerto Rico Cemeteries Project is Lisa R. Franklin, who also serves as our project leader for the U.S. Cemeteries and as one of our four Global Cemeteries project leaders. Feel free to contact Lisa with any questions you might have regarding the project. If you have reviewed the introductory information found on our Global and U.S. Project pages, and you're ready to join us, please do the following:

  1. Contact Lisa and request that you be awarded a "Cemeterist" badge;
  2. Add the word "cemeteries" to your list of followed tags;
  3. Add your name to the list of participants below, along with a brief introduction, a note about how you plan to contribute to the project. If you will be assisting in other states, or wish to provide notice that you will be inactive due to a vacation or other commitment, please note those here as well;
  4. Add categories to your personal profile that will categorize you as a member of the Global Cemeteries Project, the United States Cemeteries Project and/or the state cemeteries project(s) that you are interested in participating in. If a cemeteries project category has not yet been set up for your state, feel free to create one, or contact a project manager or leader; and finally,
  5. If you haven't already been invited, contact a project manager or leader and request an invitation to join the project’s Google+ Community. This is where many of our members discuss topics of interest and share link and stories about cemetery projects that they have started...or finished!

Participants

Listing of Current Participants

  • Can we insert your name here?

Progress

Please see our Progress page for a listing of cemeteries within our state for which surveys are completed or are in progress. We're just getting started, but we hope to get some help and grow the list soon! Always check here first before starting on a cemetery you haven't worked on yet. Someone may have already initiated a survey, created a page or even completed work on that same cemetery, and we don't want anyone to find that out after it's too late.

Creating Category Pages and Free Space Pages

One of the first and most confusing things new members run into on WikiTree is creating new profiles and categories. It's kind of like learning a new language, but not that bad. Remember, "cut and paste" is your friend! If you see a page you like, click the "edit" link in the upper right corner of the page, copy whatever text and coding you want, then paste it into a new page and start editing! Using the cut and paste method also makes it easier to follow the page naming conventions agreed upon by members of WikiTree's Categorization Project. In the case of Wisconsin cemeteries, as well as all other U.S. states and territories, both category pages and free space pages are to be created using the following format:

  • [[Category: Cemetery Name, City or Town or Village, State|Category:Cemetery Name, City/Town/Village, State]]

If you clicked on the link, you probably noticed that you were taken to a page that said, "You've followed a link to a page or category that doesn't exist yet." That's because the link was created just to show how a category page is named. You'll also notice that the link is highlighted in red. When you see that, you'll know that the link leads to a page that hasn't been properly set up yet. Below are several examples of properly labeled Florida cemetery category and free space page links that will take you to real, working pages:

So, now that you've mastered page naming and become a Cemeterist, your next question might be, "Why is it necessary to create both a category page AND a free space page for each cemetery...doesn't that just make more work and more confusion?" The short answer is "No." On the contrary, one of the best things about WikiTree is that you can have both substance and structure. In other words, you can have your cake, and find it, too!

Categorization is the key to keeping things organized within our system in a logical way. Without categories, you'd have trouble finding anything with ease, and that would only get worse as the community continues to grow. Fortunately, the hard-working members of our Categorization Project have already laid out a set of standards (a road map, if you will) that allows WikiTreers to easily navigate through thousands of categories and millions of personal profiles.

As the name implies, top-level and mid-level category pages serve to group together categories that are logically associated with each other. For our purposes, this means cemeteries within the U.S. are subdivided by state, cemeteries within each state are classified by county, and cemeteries within each county are sub-categorized by the local municipalities (city/town/village) in which they are located. Each individual (or bottom-level) category page, regardless of type, also provides a listing of all of the personal and free space profiles (or pages) that have been associated with it. An example of a bottom-level category page for a cemetery located in Florida can be viewed here.

Note that in this particular case (which is the most typical scenario), the category label include the cemetery name, the municipality in which it is located, and the state in which it is located, with commas between each. Since most states do not allow two different municipalities to use the same name, there usually isn't a need to include the county name in the label for a particular cemetery. There are, however, occasional exceptions, and in those cases, the county name should be included in the label. Most of these exceptions occur when cemeteries are located in rural areas. In these instances, the Cemeterist should use their best judgement to label the category in a way that is most helpful in leading people who are unfamiliar with the local area to the site, and the county name should always be included. One of the most helpful inclusions might be the name of the roadway on which the entrance to the cemetery is located. In most states (Florida being one of the notable exceptions), townships are another descriptive term that can be used. See the following examples:

[[Category:Glover Cemetery, Old Thornhill Road, Polk County, Florida]]


As good as they for keeping thing organized, category pages are very limited in what they are able to display, and that's where free space pages come in. A free space page is the place where the "meat" of our information regarding a specific cemetery will be displayed. Here, you might find a descriptive narrative of the cemetery's history, a map or directions, contact information, links to pages about that cemetery on other websites and most importantly, a table of interments.

Generally speaking, a cemetery won't have a free space page until a photographic and/or data-gathering survey has been initiated. Once information becomes available and a table of interments begins to take shape, you'll see a sortable listing of persons buried within that cemetery, along with a variety of data that might include birth dates, death dates, ages, relationships and, hopefully, photographs and GPS coordinates for each grave site. In order to preserve the structure associated with categories, free space and category pages should be cross-linked so the either one can be easily referred to from the other page. In addition, the labeling of free space pages should follow the same format as that described above for category pages. A good example of a beginning layout for a Florida cemetery free space page can be found here.

Useful Pages

  • Puerto Rico, Cemeteries - The mid-level category page for cemeteries located within the State of Wisconsin. Subcategory listings for some of the state's 72 counties are provided here.
  • Progress - A second link to our progress page, showing a listing of cemeteries within the state for which surveys are completed or are in progress.


This page was last modified 14:32, 9 March 2023. This page has been accessed 97 times.