* Additional information sheet

[191104]

I would like to make a separate sheet to record cemeteries and lair numbers. Can anyone advise how I should do this? Thanks

[tatewise]

Sorry, but you will have to give us a few more clues.

What do you mean by "make a separate sheet"?
Are you talking about making a Report, or creating Facts, or what?
Or are you talking about creating Source records or perhaps Place records?

Have you entered any Cemetery data already? If so where have you put it?

Or have you found Cemetery or Burial records? If so what?

BTW: What are "lair numbers"?

[jmurphy]

From the information given at The Mitchell Library's page on Burial Lair and Cremation Registers, I would guess that lair numbers are similar to plot numbers in the USA.

Knowing the ownership of the plot in the US can give clues about family members. A record of plot ownership might show all the different burials in the plot. You can find the married surnames of daughters there, etc.

[jmurphy]

I would like to make a separate sheet to record cemeteries and lair numbers. Can anyone advise how I should do this? Thanks

This answer is more relevant to the General Research area instead of being about using Family Historian, but one thing you can do is keep that information in a spreadsheet, using Excel or similar software (I use LibreOffice). Another possibility is to use Google Docs, so that you can have access to your data while you are away from home.

The website Find a Grave accepts submissions from contributors who want to upload data in bulk, and they used to provide a template which contributors could use. I figured "why reinvent the wheel" and downloaded the template to use as a starting point to design my own cemetery record sheet. You could use this kind of spreadsheet as a starting point to design your own.

The new site seems to have hidden the link to download their template, but I was able to retrieve a copy from 2017 using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Try this link: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ww ... metery.xls and choose the snapshot from 22 April 2017 on the calendar. From there, you should get a dialog box to open or save Cemetery.xls.

Like many people who say they distribute spreadsheet templates, this is NOT a template, just a plain spreadsheet. Be sure to save a copy and put it away, and do any modifications on a copy. I usually re-save sheets like this as a template (*.xlt in Excel or *.odt for OpenOffice / LibreOffice) after I download them to make sure I don't wreck the original.

For other options, I did a Google Search for "cemetery record spreadsheet" and got many other results, some of which are bound to be better designed than the old Find a Grave template.

Also try Cyndi's List. Look for the category Printable Charts & Forms

[LornaCraig]

BTW: What are "lair numbers"?

Jmurphy is right. They are plot numbers. 'Lair' is a Scottish term for the area of ground in which a grave is situated.

[AnneEast]

As jmurphy says, I would use an Excel spreadsheet. If you think about how you might want to consult your information you can make headers for columns so that you can sort the information in different ways. I do this for Parish record infrmation and GRO indexes for One Name studies.
Anne

[jmurphy]

As jmurphy says, I would use an Excel spreadsheet. If you think about how you might want to consult your information you can make headers for columns so that you can sort the information in different ways. I do this for Parish record infrmation and GRO indexes for One Name studies.
Anne

The one caution I have for keeping information in spreadsheets is to keep one worksheet as your master copy.

If you want to sort your spreadsheet, DO NOT sort on your master copy. Make a copy of the worksheet and sort the copy. If you make a mistake when you set up the sort, and you don't get all the columns in, you can wreck your data . If you accidentally save the scrambled sheet after you're done, you can't restore the data to its original form with Undo.

[ColeValleyGirl]

If you make a mistake when you set up the sort

First thing I always do when I set up data in a spreadsheet is to add an 'Original Sort' column at the front of each sheet, numbered consecutively upwards from 1. That way I can always restore the original order by sorting on that column.

[davidm_uk]

That doesn't help if you make the mistake that jmurphy describes, ie. you accidentally don't include all columns in the sort, so some columns are unchanged and others are sorted. Been there and done that! Always have a copy that you can revert back to.

[ColeValleyGirl]

you accidentally don't include all columns in the sort

I set it up as an Excel table for that very reason.

[191104]

Thanks for all of these replies. Some really good tips.

I live in Scotland and have contacted the Council's bereavement services on a few occasions. I have been provided with lair (plot) numbers and locations of the graves if they do not have a headstone. So I wanted to index these as I received the info and added it to the relevant person on my tree.

I have also visited the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to Parochial Relief Applications and want to index these too.