Since 2014 the Genealogy Club Seabrook – Kiawah Islands (formerly Digging into Roots Together – D.I.R.T.) has met to learn, explore, and discuss the wide variety of research approaches for identifying ancestors, their lifetimes, and their locations. On June 28, a group of club members met to explore the information found on gravestones and record this information on findagrave.com, a website that allows you to search and add to an online database of cemetery records.
Following that exercise, on July 12 a group of club members gathered at the cemetery of the historic Johns Island Presbyterian Church on Bohicket Road, which was founded on the island in 1710. This field trip was an opportunity to learn how to take pictures of gravestones, make transcripts of what’s written on them, and upload the information about a deceased person to findagrave.com. The group was able to locate and photograph headstones of some of those interred in the church cemetery and provide GPS coordinates to link them to existing memorials posted on findagrave.com.
While the Genealogy Club members practiced their newly learned research skills, they made an important contribution to the Johns Island Presbyterian Church by enhancing the online memorials of those interred in their cemetery with information not previously recorded. If you are interested in learning more about the Genealogy Club of Seabrook-Kiawah Islands, contact Lynn Baker at 845-242-2344.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image credit: Lynn Baker)