The problems with St. Columbkille's Roman Catholic Cemetery [26 December 2012]
If you don't have a sense of humour, don't read this.
I have been "cleaning" pages where people were buried in St. Columbkille's Roman Catholic Cemetery which is in a little hamlet called Uptergrove which is now in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. Uptergrove is now in the Township of Ramara.
An amazing number of things can go wrong:
- That part of Simcoe County was Ontario County until 1974--that's right: [inhabited place], Ontario, Ontario, Canada.
- Ramara was two separate townships named Rama and Mara until 1994 (but the townships had been unified until 1869). Uptergrove was in Mara.
- People were living in Mara before 1867 when Ontario Province was Canada West, and even before 1840 when Canada West was Upper Canada.
- Sometimes the reference to the cemetery omits Uptergrove and just indicates it is in Mara.
- Cemeteries should come first in a description that includes them. Quite often Uptergrove comes first with the cemetery tacked on the end.
- St. Columbkille's is also a church where marriages occurred and should be reported as "Uptergrove, Ontario, Ontario, Canada" under Place and "St. Columbkille's Church" under Description.
- There are several potential spelling errors in St. Columbkille (forgetting the period after "St", forgetting the space after "St.", swapping the "o" for the "u" in two places or just one of them, forgetting the silent "b", forgetting the apostrophe. I have come across all of them and if one misses any one of them the "prompter" doesn't recognize it.
- Writing out Roman Catholic instead of shortening it to "R.C." or "RC" or "R. C." or "Rom Cath" or "Rom. Cath."
- And then, the final nail in the coffin, adjusting the date of burial so that it comes after the date of death--the orginator felt burials could be described month and year only and this can place the burial second or third in the timeline with the death on the bottom line.
No wonder there were over 500 errors concerning St Colombkille's when I first started this exercise several weeks ago!--goldenoldie 10:53, 26 December 2012 (EST)
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