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Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Transcription Project

by John E. Sterling

The Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project was begun by genealogists in 1990 as a way of pooling information available from gravestone inscriptions in the state. Rhode Island's unique history led to the proliferation of tiny family burial grounds rather than large, church-maintained cemeteries, and the gravestones can be hard to find. Rhode Island's seventeenth-century charter guaranteed separation of church and state. This religious tolerance allowed many churches to flourish in each town, but consequently many were small, often lacking even a building, and most did not have a cemetery. There were no town greens with a large white church and a cemetery in colonial Rhode Island. (Little Compton, the exception, began as a Massachusetts town.) With the exception of port cities with dense populations like Newport and Providence, most families buried their dead on family farms until about 1850, when large town and private cemeteries became popular. A typical Rhode Island town has 150 cemeteries, whereas a typical Massachusetts or Connecticut town has eighteen. Without knowing where to look for a particular gravestone, the search can be frustrating and often fruitless.

When this project began, 1,862 historical cemeteries were already registered in a state program that identified them with a white sign containing the registration number and listed them in the city or town clerk's office. The method for gathering the information for the project was simple: volunteers were to find all existing transcriptions of Rhode Island cemeteries (whether or not the burial ground still remained), enter the data into a computer, and then use the printout to check surviving stones. Our team of volunteers found over a hundred transcriptions — some running to several thousand pages — covering about two thousand cemeteries and entered the inscriptions into a database, which, though created for this one state, has become the Association for Gravestone Studies standard format. The volunteers were then sent into the field with a printout to see which stones were still there, whether they were correctly transcribed, and to record inscriptions of stones added since the original transcription took place. An additional task involved mapping the location of each stone within each cemetery.

The consequences of this plan have been diverse, often unforeseen, and quite exciting. The old transcriptions allowed our team to discover a vast number of previously lost cemeteries and to recreate others genuinely destroyed or moved. This project has identified and registered 1,184 more burial grounds, bringing the current total to 3,046 of the estimated 3,100 historical cemeteries in Rhode Island. There are now 425,000 inscriptions in the database. The cross-checking of transcriptions — against each other and against gravestones, using modern techniques of reading difficult inscriptions — has helped shape our understanding of older sources. We have found that recorders who transcribed large numbers of cemeteries (over 200) typically had error rates in the five to ten percent range. Recorders who transcribed only a few cemeteries had error rates from ten percent to over fifty percent with an average of probably about twenty-five percent.

After project volunteers complete the work of transcribing, cross-checking, and recording the information for a given town or cemetery, the data is compiled into book format. As of this writing, books have been published for seven towns — East Greenwich, North Kingstown (with a separate book for Elm Grove Cemetery), Exeter, Warwick, Coventry, Hopkinton, Middletown, and the North Burial Ground in Providence. Some were published by town historical societies, while others were published by Gateway Press. Books are planned for Smithfield, South Kingstown, and Charlestown within the next two years. Cemetery maps are included in each book. These books can be ordered through the Rhode Island Genealogical Society (P.O. Box 433, Greenville, RI, 02828) and most are also available through the NewEnglandAncestors.org book store.

NEHGS has recently added the master index to the Rhode Island Cemetery Database to its collection of searchable databases on the NewEnglandAncestors.org website. The database index can be searched by name, town and cemetery, and date. The search results display the name and dates on the inscription, cemetery name, and town. The location and history of each cemetery is shown when clicking on the link associated with the cemetery name in the list of results. The NEHGS database contains only the index for the complete transcription database. If you find your ancestor in this index, you will want to visit one of the locations (shown below) with the full database to see the rest of the information on the gravestone.

Please remember that the Rhode Island Cemetery Transcription Project is a work in progress. Some cemeteries present in the database have not been completely transcribed, in which case not every name will be found in the index. The original goal was to transcribe all seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century gravestones, and probably ninety-five percent have in fact been recorded. Probably, however, only twenty percent of the twentieth-century gravestones have been entered in the database. The theory was that people who died in the twentieth century, for the most part, had death certificates and other records that could be used by genealogists, and most of these gravestones are made of very durable granite. Some volunteers have recorded a number of twentieth-century gravestones, and in many cases when a cemetery has a mixture of nineteenth and twentieth-century stones, all of them were recorded. That said, users should know that many large modern cemeteries have not been recorded, including most Catholic cemeteries like St. Ann's in Cranston, and St. Francis and Mt. St. Mary's, both in Pawtucket. Rhode Island has 100 to 150 large cemeteries such as those that are common in other states.

A further caution is also in order. Not every gravestone previously transcribed is still around to be checked. The research that our group has conducted on existing stones has confirmed that transcribers, even the best ones, made errors. If a gravestone has not been checked — either because it has not been found or because that cemetery has not been entered — the data should be used with appropriate care.

It is also advisable to look at the cemetery in natural order to see who is buried nearby. This review could possibly identify other relatives. If you find your ancestor is buried in one of the small family farm cemeteries, you can find the location of that cemetery and additional relevant information by clicking on the cemetery name in the list of results. It will tell you, for example, that South Kingstown historical cemetery #56 (SK056), the Sylvester Wilcox lot, is:

south of LIBERTY LANE - GREAT SWAMP 9 burials with 4 inscriptions from 1825 to 1841 30 ft x 35 ft in good condition no enclosure; sign not installed yet NOTE: George Harris #256, 19 Nov 1880, On land of Benjamin Watson known as the Wilcox farm, Great Neck a burial yard of this family west of the old house now burnt and northeast from new house, beside wall with no protection. In this yard is buried gr grandfather Wilcox and his wife and grandmother his daughter. This cemetery was registered as the Worden lot by the state, but the Harris notes clearly define the people buried here as Wilcox. On Great neck in Great Swamp SE of RR tracks. 2600 feet west of parking area at bar way. Follow trail from parking area for about 2000 feet taking all right forks to house foundation on right at 41 deg. 27.938' x 71 deg. 35.198. The cemetery is 530 more feet. It is at the north end of the second of three cleared fields. There is a stone wall on the west edge. 41 deg. 27.946' x 71 deg. 35.312' GPS coordinates (WGS84 datum) This cemetery has been recorded and checked.

Many of the early grave markers in small family cemeteries are just fieldstones placed in the ground at the head and foot of the grave. Some have initials, and some also have dates. Be sure to check the index for the last name initial to find these early markers. If we were able to identify the name through probate or other records, that name is shown surrounded by square brackets to indicate it is not on the stone.

The Rhode Island Cemeteries Database Home Page (http://members.tripod.com/~debyns/cemetery.html) contains additional information on the database, the cemetery books, and Rhode Island gravestone carvers. The entire database (most listings are from 1647 to 1900), including name and maiden name indexes, can be accessed by computer at the repositories listed below. Links to web pages containing information on research services (if available) are also included for those who live at a distance from these libraries.

Rhode Island Historical Society Library
121 Hope Street
Providence, RI 02906
401-331-8575
http://www.rihs.org/
Research Services 

American French Genealogical Society
78 Earle Street
Woonsocket, RI 02861
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2113
Pawtucket, RI 02861-0113
http://www.afgs.org/
Research Services  

East Greenwich Free Library
82 Peirce Street
East Greenwich, RI 02818
401-884-9510
http://www.eastgreenwichlibrary.org/
 
Warwick Public Library
600 Sandy Lane
Warwick, RI 02886
401-739-5440
http://wpl.lib.ri.us/

West Warwick Public Library
1043 Main Street
West Warwick, RI 02893
(401) 828-3750
http://wwlibrary.org/MAIN/Homepage/

John E. Sterling ended his eleven-year tenure as coordinator of the Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project in 2002. Roger Beaudry is the current project coordinator. If you are interested in volunteering for the Rhode Island Cemetery project, email Mr. Beaudry at rdbeaudry@cox.net.