It's Cemeteries Week on WikiTree!
There's a particular kind of quiet you only find in an old cemetery. The kind where you can hear the grass move, and the only other sound is your own camera shutter. If you've ever spent an afternoon walking rows of weathered stones — kneeling down to read a name that's nearly gone, brushing away just enough lichen to make out a date — you already understand why this week matters to me.
It's Cemeteries Week on WikiTree, running 17–23 August 2026, and there is a full slate of ways to take part.
Why cemetery work matters
Headstones are among our most fragile historic records. They sit outdoors in the weather, year after year, and the ones carved in soft marble in the 1840s are already fading past reading. Every stone photographed today is a record that survives the next fifty winters. Every burial transcribed and sourced becomes a clue somebody else can follow — a maiden name, a military unit, an infant who never appeared in a census, a family plot that quietly proves a relationship no document ever spelled out.
That's the part I love. A cemetery isn't just a list of deaths. It's a map of a community — who was buried beside whom, which families shared a plot, which names repeat down the generations. Read it carefully and it will tell you things the paperwork never did.
Question of the Week
Have you ever photographed headstones? Share your story in G2G — the answers this week are worth reading all on their own.
Join the Cemeterist Project
If cemetery work is your thing, the Cemeterist Project is where WikiTreers who photograph headstones and build profiles from them find each other. Answer the welcome post to join and earn your badge, add CEMETERIES to your followed tags, and you'll never miss what the group is working on.
Get together with us this week
Zoom Research Party — Thursday, 20 August 2026, 3:00 p.m. ET Join on WikiTree Zoom (12:00 p.m. PT · 7:00 p.m. UTC · 8:00 p.m. BST · 9:00 p.m. CEST · 5:00 a.m. AEST Friday)
A research party is a casual, face-to-face working session — we all show up, work side by side, and help each other over the rough spots. Most of our collaboration happens in text, so it's a treat to actually see each other. You do not need to be a project member to come.
Bring a stone you can't read. Bring a burial you can't source. Bring a profile you can't connect to the tree. Screen sharing is welcome, and honestly, the stubborn cases make the best sessions. We'll be working on transcribing markers and monuments, adding reliable birth, marriage, death, and census sources, applying cemetery and regional categories, documenting cemetery histories on free-space pages, and connecting profiles to the main tree.
Discord Party — Friday, 21 August 2026, 3:00–5:00 p.m. ET Details here
Stop in for any part of those two hours. Never used Discord? This is a good excuse to try it — create a free account, link it through the wikitree-verification channel, and meet us in the current-research-party channel. Bring your questions, or stay and help answer somebody else's.
Saturday Roundup — Saturday, 22 August 2026, 10:00 a.m. ET Watch on YouTube
I'm the guest for this week's Behind the Branches Spotlight, and we'll be talking about documenting cemeteries on WikiTree — why it matters, how to identify, categorize, and improve cemetery entries, and practical tips for sourcing and adding burial details. Come spend your Saturday morning with us. Coffee encouraged.
Play the game
This week's Cemeteries Connection Checkers is live. It's a painless way to spend twenty minutes and end up somewhere in the tree you didn't expect.
Project challenges
Pick one that suits you — there's something here whether you've got a camera and an afternoon or just a browser and a cup of tea.
- Data Doctor Challenge: Add missing connections between existing profiles using Find A Grave data.
- Appalachia Project: Take photographs at an Appalachian cemetery.
- Maryland Project: Add or improve profiles for Friendship Cemetery.
Military cemeteries:
- Gettysburg — US Civil War Project
- Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial — Great War
- Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery — Great War
- Saint Pierre Cemetery — Great War
- Vietnam Memorial — Vietnam War Project
- Lae War Cemetery — World War II Project
If you can only do one thing
Go outside. Find the nearest small cemetery — the one on the county road, the one behind the church, the one nobody's mowed in a while. Photograph a dozen stones. Note the section and row. Come home and transcribe them.
And if you'd like company while you do it — help spread the word. Tell your genealogy friends it's Cemeteries Week and point them to WikiTree. The more hands on this work, the more of it survives.
See you Thursday.
Azure Rae Robinson is a WikiTree Team Member, Social Media Manager, and Project Leader for Ambassadors and Events. She volunteers at Fairmont Cemetery and writes at Country Girl Genealogy.
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