The Bristol Cemeteries Database Project is an ongoing effort to transcribe information from county gravestones into a central database for the use of historians, gravestone researchers and genealogical researchers. Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, F.A.S.G. created the database and shepherded it through its first several years. I am continuing her work and am currently working on putting the database online.

     The first phase in building the database is the entry of existing gravestone transcriptions from published sources and manuscripts. That phase currently stands at about 27,000 transcriptions from about 600 cemeteries, primarily entered by Cherry. I have a backlog of thousands of additional transcriptions which I have begun entering, and there are many more in libraries. The second phase involves trained volunteers who visit the cemeteries, compare the existing transcriptions with the gravestones, correcting the database entries and adding stones that had not previously been transcribed. This project uses the same database format and techniques as the databse at he core of the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Commission database, which which was begun in 1990 and now holds more than 425,000 inscriptions.

     I am also working on putting this database online. At this stage only the cemetery descriptions are online. Note that I am still reformatting the cemetery information. Some visual elements, such as capitalization, italics, and the use of quotation marks, will vary from cemetery to cemetery until that reformatting has been completed. To view the cemetery information begin by selecting a cemetery.

     At this stage in the project there are cemeteries pages for some of the Bristol County cities and towns. Only the communities with links have pages. As I create pages for the other communities they will be linked here. Note that these pages generally do not contain, or contain links to, inscriptions from the database. They serve as introductions to the cemeteries of each community, and include information and maps to help researchers locate cemeteries, their records, and published and manuscript transcriptions.