At the Orange Family History Group’s first meeting of the year, librarian Sean Brady made a special presentation to a genuinely-surprised, long-serving member, Lynne Irvine.

When the group met last Tuesday (18 January), Lynne was given a Certificate of appreciation in: "Recognition of time, effort and dedication over the past 15 years developing Orange Cemetery Database."

For researchers, family historians and genealogists, resources like cemetery databases are invaluable. Today so much of that information is available at the click of a mouse and it is sometimes easy to overlook just how much work is involved in putting it all together — often by volunteers such as Lynne and other family history group members.

“It is an amazing amount of work and a very dedicated group of people,” said local studies librarian, Julie Sykes.

The cemetery database story began around 25 years ago, when Orange Family History Group volunteers began meticulously cataloguing and mapping graves in Orange and surrounding village cemeteries like Amaroo, Byng, Cadia, Cargo, Chinamen’s Bend, Guyong, March, Ophir and Spring Hill.

Headstone inscriptions were transcribed and locations mapped by religion, section, row, and plot. Dates and names were then crossferenced with other council and church records — a staggering and tedious amount of work that occupies several years for the small group. 

This information was published on CD ROM in 2002 and sold to raise money for the Orange Family History Group.

Over the past ten years, work has continued to keep the database up to date and further information added. Grave locations have been more accurately mapped with GPS coordinates and every grave, even those without a headstone, has been photographed.

And Lynne along with her fellow volunteers have continued checking names and dates with other records like: Trove; Births, Deaths and Marriages; the Ryerson Index and others.

The result of all that work can now be found on the Orange City Council website as a downloadable spreadsheet and cemetery maps.

“It is an amazing amount of work and Lynne has dedicated the last 15 years to doing that,” said Julie.

“Also, before she handed it over to me Lynne created a manual, the ‘Bible’ on how it came together.”

It truly is a staggering amount of work and one worthy of recognition! Thanks from us, Lynne!