ORANGE CEMETERY DATABASE
A group of volunteers from the Orange Family History Group have devoted many years to collating details for the Orange Cemetery database. This is now available in excel spreadsheet format and is accessible online.
The spreadsheet contains over 26,000 entries with all the information that is available minus the photos. Many of the entries have the GPS co-ordinates which will make it easier for you to find if you are actually in the cemetery searching for your relative or you can use it to find the location on a map. There is a ‘Comments’ section which will often contain references to funeral, death, obituary or probate notices giving you the newspaper dates and pages. In some cases there may be a query re the entry eg the headstone date of death does not correspond with the Births Deaths and Marriages entry.
Once you have downloaded the spreadsheet to your device you don’t need to be on the internet to use it. You will notice that in the Comments field there may be “Photo” written. The photos will not be available on the web until the final version is uploaded, however you can request that the photo be sent to you by contacting the Orange Family History group through Julie Sykes jsykes@orange.nsw.gov.au. There may also be mentions of entries in the “Orange Leader” and the “Central Western Daily”. These are also available through Julie if you are unable to attend the Orange City Library yourself.
To access the spreadsheet follow this link: click here
Orange Family History Group volunteers Marie Cousins, Lynne Irvine, Jenny Gillard and Julie Milne.
Birth Death and Marriage Index
Since 2009 a group of dedicated members has been indexing the Central Western Daily for birth death and marriage information. Originally the indexing concentrated on the notices sections of the paper to create an invaluable resource for family history researchers. This approach was used primarily to make this enormous, retrospective task achievable for our enthusiastic volunteers.
The benefit of this basic information was realised early. The indexing team in collaboration with Central West Libraries staff decided to broaden their record keeping to include reports of news and the social pages provided they contained local information and people. It is constantly being added to and can be searched from the Library’s catalogue.
The entries complement the information available form the range of digitised local newspapers.