September T-shirt Winners
Today’s the last day to upload photos for a September t-shirt. Here are this month’s winners: Ddwertman lmwillett Sophie mlmckenzie smflatness Gayle sadie63 Jeremyeguzman waynedaz Simini WizardAlex J_and_K marnweeks lisabug If you’ve crossed the 1,000 threshold (for either GPS-tagged photos or transcriptions) and you have…
Another Successful Saturday
This weekend we held our mapping event in Sandy, Utah, USA. We spread the word as best we could to the genealogy community, and we were pleasantly surprised by some new faces among the usual suspects. We started out the day by training everyone on…
Growing Grave Records
The BillionGraves database of headstone photos and transcribed records just keeps growing, thanks to all of you. Starting this week, I’m going to post a list of all the countries you’ve been uploading from, along with lists of the states, provinces, and other sections within…
Event: Cemetery Mapping in Sandy, Utah
It’s been a while since the BillionGraves team last organized a cemetery-mapping event, so we’re planning one for next Saturday, September 24. You’re invited. WHO: Anyone near enough to join us (photo collectors and transcribers are all welcome!). WHAT: Mapping out the Memorial Gardens of…
Transcribing for Posterity
Recently BillionGraves crossed the 200,000-record mark, and the number it still climbing. In light of all these available records, I thought I’d revisit some points on how to give the best you can while you’re transcribing. The most important part about transcribing is remembering that…
Deciphering Welsh Writing
Transcribers may have noticed the recent influx of Welsh headstones. When BillionGraves first started to get a lot of photos from Sweden, one of our users provided information to help us transcribe Swedish stones. Luckily one of the individuals uploading photos from Wales has supplied…
August’s Winners and September’s Contest
August has been a photo-, map-, and transcription-filled month, and you all have been amazing in the process. Every one of you contributing to BillionGraves has contributed to the awesome growth we’ve seen and to the growing number of complete cemetery records and photos that…
Linking Photos of the Same Headstone
The recent Android update included numerous bug fixes and one new feature: linking images. This feature is in response to the need we’ve found (and you’ve undoubtedly seen) to link multiple images of the same headstone so anyone looking for the ancestor buried under that…
Android Update: Avoiding the Crash
Today we released an update to the Android app that has some awesome fixes and will make it easier for more of you to use BillionGraves. We’ve received reports from some of you that the app would force close when you tried to take a…
The T-shirt Deadline Approaches
August is nearly over, so if you’re anywhere near collecting 1,000 GPS-tagged photos, hurry and collect the last few you need to earn your BillionGraves t-shirt. We’ve had a few new winners since the last time I announced the list, so I’ll post it again…
Understanding Name Discrepancies on Headstones
This Wednesday I had the pleasure of chatting with the sexton of the largest municipal cemetery in the United States: Salt Lake City Cemetery. With over 120,000 graves inside, it’s quite the area of responsibility to look after and care for. The sexton was very…
More Graves, More Winners
The number of graves you have all mapped out and transcribed is climbing faster than ever—even slow upload days are higher than the average we had before August. You have all really stepped up to the plate on this, and the number of individuals who…