GENEALOGY / Family History

VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED TO TRANSCRIBE RECORDS. The mission of this work at home project is for the preservation of the subject historical and genealogical documents by extracting data from the subject hand written registers and transcribing the information from document photos into a digital database in the comfort of your home.

The sacramental document registers date back to the late 1887-1890 era. whereas aging of the oldest registers has become difficult to decipher with severe fading of the inked handwritings as well as and portions of some pages being dried and corners crumbling. Approximately 80,000 documents to be transcribed. Estimated time per document entry is 1-3 minutes depending upon reading the documents off of your monitor or viewing a printed copy on paper.

A twenty year project to restore more than 13,000 names of burials at a Polish Catholic cemetery on the eastside of Detroit, established in 1887. This project will be renewed in 2022 to complete the transcription of an additional 10,000 burials since 1986 located in a "Non-Denominational" section of the cemetery. Please view the scope of this project by viewing the video Sacred Heart of St Mary Cemetery Project below.

ECHO .. an acronym for Eloise Cemetery Historical Organization  ...  The headlines of the newspapers and TV new reports sensationalized the actual workings of a small group of volunteers, who with intent of community service and respect, began mowing the 3ft-4ft tall weeds covering large acres of property and clearing away the 1/4" to 1" of topsoil and debris covering small grave markers. Their intent was to carefully expose 4" x 8" numbered cement headstones at a long forgotten cemetery that  was in service from 1910-1948 for the more than 7,500 former residents and patients of the Wayne County Eloise Treatment Facility. Their efforts came to a halt 8 weeks later when Officials from Wayne County, who owned the property were alerted by an concerned individual, irked about the possibility of grave desecration. At a meeting between the parties, the volunteers were informed to cease and desist their efforts and threatened with arrests for trespassing. 

The vital record cards were packed tightly in the many drawers of old filing cabinets dating back to the late 1890's. City staffers would have to traverse a few floors down to the storage room each time to finger through the cards searching for the one card of 100,000 on file that contained the answer(s) to caller inquiries. A volunteer group was organized, a digital database format was designed and 5 months later the database for the vital records was produced. City staffers can now view their records from their computer monitors in search for the subject person and reply to inquiries in less than one minute.