"New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions, 1835-2006" has many records with incorrect places of death
The "New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions, 1835-2006" collection is confusingly named. In fact, it also includes many transcriptions from Australian cemeteries. What is worse, many of those sources incorrectly record the place of death as New Zealand. Those records have often been attached to profiles and the profile's place of death has been set to New Zealand.
As an example, Thomas Warre Harriott (G7V9-RQP) died in New South Wales in 1908 and was buried in Saint Thomas Rest Park, North Sydney. I have confirmed that his death is recorded in the New South Wales online BDM: HARRIOTT, THOMAS W, 7187/1908, WILLIAM, DOROTHEA L, ST LEONARDS. Nevertheless, the source records his place of death as New Zealand, and this has been entered in his profile by an unsuspecting user in 2022 when they attached the source to the profile. Thomas's profile currently has two hints attached from the same collection; they relate to the deaths and burials of two sons (Robert Guy Harriott in 1882 and William Rupert Harriott in 1900). These two records similarly show the place of death as New Zealand and place of burial as Saint Thomas Rest Park, North Sydney. (No profiles have yet been created for the sons. William apparently died in South Africa while on war service; presumably he is buried there and memorialised in Sydney.) The citation for the record which is attached to Thomas is "New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions, 1835-2006", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGKJ-D411 : Thu Jul 31 21:14:23 UTC 2025), Entry for Thomas Warre Harriott, 12 Apr 1908.
I have corrected several dozen such profiles in the last day.
Can the collection be renamed more meaningfully, and the incorrect places of death fixed?
Answers
-
I hope you have more success than I did when making a similar request.
I found that a collection titled Northumberland Non-Conformist records contained a very large amount of baptisms that took place in in Anglican churches in County Durham. I thought that to be very unhelpful in respect of researching Durham ancestors, but was told it was not possible to either rename the collection, or move those records relating to events in County Durham to another, appropriately named collection.
Other examples have been reported over the last few years, but from the responses we have received it appears FamilySearch administrators appear to believe such issues do not need to be addressed.
2 -
This collection seems to be from DGS 008150194
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/results?count=100&q.filmNumber=008150194, consisting of Monumental Inscription from New Zealand Cemeteries, apart from two which are definitely incorrect as they are for Australia, and one which has no details, so it could be for Australia, but the author has written about other New Zealand Cemeteries.
Definitely incorrect in this collection https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/koha:112231
"Inscriptions from the St. John's Cemetery in Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia."
Locality Subjects Australia, New South Wales, Parramatta - Cemeteries
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/koha:112234 Monumental inscriptions : Sudney, New South Wales, Australia, St. Thomas' Cemetery, 1813-1953/ E. J. Lea-Scarlett. Note, should be SYDNEY
"St. Thomas's Churchyard was the first appointed burial ground between the Sydney Harbour and Pennant Hills."
Locality Subjects Australia, New South Wales, Sydney - Cemeteries
Note, in spite of classified Australia on the catalog entries, still someone managed to classify these two as New Zealand.
1 -
Can you refer on to some Department, to move the two Australian databases out of the New Zealand Cemeteries database, to a similar Australian Cemeteries database. Thanks
0 -
@MaureenE123, @SerraNola I have reviewed a collection record which has a publication date of 2017 and describes itself as New Zealand, cemetery transcriptions : COLLECTION RECORD, 1840-1981. The date range is slightly shorter than that of the collection itself (1835-2006). There are some 400 microfilm records in the collection. Looking at the titles of the microfilms, I see that there are a number of entries that are obviously not intended to be in the source collection. Two of those films are the ones that @MaureenE123 referred to in her post of 29 December (or thereabouts). Here is a list of what I think are incorrect:
Film
Title
Comment
008125358
West Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia
South Australia, Australia
008125358
Port Augusta South Australia
South Australia, Australia
008150194
Saint Thomas Rest Park, Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia
New South Wales, Australia
008150194
Saint John's Anglican Cemetery, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia
New South Wales, Australia
008150196
Kiama N S W
New South Wales, Australia
008153156
Old Melbourne Transcript
Victoria, Australia
008153160
North Brisbane Queensland
Queensland, Australia
008153160
Thursday Island
Queensland, Australia
008163482
Whittlesea
Victoria, Australia
008163482
Walhalla
Victoria, Australia
115673060
Mount Camel, Victoria, Australia
This may just be an error in the title of the entry. There is a Mount Camel Cemetery, Houhora, Far North, New Zealand. Most of the entries in this film are in fact New Zealand burials in the Far North, New Zealand.
I have spent the last several days correcting several hundred profiles where records from these films have been attached and the death place has been incorrectly set to New Zealand. However, there are thousands of unattached records which are ticking time bombs waiting to be attached incorrectly.
I would also question whether the collection as a whole should specify death places. It is relatively rare for cemetery inscriptions to include places of death.
0 -
Sorry about the narrow width of the first column of the table. It was fine when I posted it, but "What you see is not what you get". When I tried to edit the post, I got this error:
Attempt to assign property "FormatBody" on false
But that'll be for another discussion.
Edit: Miracle - it's fixed itself!
0