Te Puke cemetery first for online project

Finding family burial plots in Western Bay cemeteries will be a click away through a project underway to put the District's five cemeteries online.

Te Puke's cemeteries will be the first to go online when Western Bay of Plenty District Council launches digitised cemetery records. This is scheduled for early next year.

The Te Puke Cemetery in Dudley Vercoe Drive will be the first to go online, followed by the town's original cemetery in Landscape Road.

Council manages cemeteries in four areas - Maketu, Te Puke, Oropi and Katikati - all of which will be digitised in due course.

Local historian Christine Clement says she began asking Council several years ago to digitise burial records. Despite having online access to cemetery records across the globe, she found it frustrating not to have online access to her own town's cemetery.

"Many councils have put cemetery records online with help from their local genealogy groups. This has mutual benefit as genealogists love cemeteries and councils love burial records," says Christine.

Western Bay's online programme has been greatly helped by members of Te Puke's branch of the NZ Genealogy Society Inc (NZGS) Graham Black and Dorothy Mutton

They began indexing the Old Cemetery in 2010 and have spent hundreds of hours checking more than 4000 digital entries in an audit of both the old and new cemeteries.

While Graham turned his hand to checking Council's digital records, Dorothy photographed headstones and recorded inscriptions to match them with the national Birth, Deaths and Marriages data base and Council's records.

Graham reckons their combined effort has achieved 99% accuracy and says their work has gained great appreciation from the NZGS in its intent to get every cemetery in New Zealand indexed and placed on DVDs available to members.

Council's Reserves and Facilities Manager Peter Watson says the work done by local genealogy members has been a great help to Council's online project. While Council has a fairly rich database, Peter says local history and knowledge has helped fill gaps in Council's records.

"These people have done much of the initial tracking of burial records but we still have a complex task ahead to get all the information together and as accurate as possible before going online."

Te Puke's first cemetery in Landscape Road opened in the late 1890s, its first recorded occupant being William Archibald McGhie who was aged just 24 when he died in July 1890. Prior to this all Te Puke burials were in Tauranga.

There was little need of a cemetery before this time as the population of Te Puke was only about 300 and deaths were few. However Te Puke's prosperity and growth over the next century saw the first cemetery fill to capacity.

A new cemetery was opened in Dudley Vercoe Drive in 1971. This has 1667 plots, including burials, ashes, children's and Returned Services Association members' ashes and burials.