"Plotting" or Mapping Cemetaries

A while back I read this post on GenealogyBlog.com about Goldbug's "SiteFinder online edition". If your not familiar with Goldbug's product line, its well worth the trip. Basically, they are the producers of Animap, and now have a free web-based version of The Gold Bug's SiteFinder U.S. place name database. This lets you search for towns, schools, courthouses, etc., and plot them onto Google Maps. The focus of this post is what it can do with Cemeteries and Google Earth...

First, a brief statement needs to be made about what Google Earth can do now automatically vs. the future. By default, Google Earth can show you location of Churches, Shopping areas, Hospitals and so on. With a recent update, that I just noticed on my Google Earth, I see the following changes:

Before the update you would see stuff like Churches, Schools and so on. They are now expanding the categories and breaking them out further. Anyway, if you select or check the box for Churches, today, you will see next to nothing. In some larger cities its a few at best. So, I assume Google Earth is in the process of getting these layers more populated?

What's the alternative; as I don't know when Google Earth will be considered complete on populating these new layers? The alternative is Goldbug's "Sitefinder online edition". Again, its Free for up to 200 hits (cemeteries) per county.

So, the next question is; how do I get the results from Goldbug's "Sitefinder" to Google Earth? Well, Sitefinder already provides you the results on Google Maps, which is data that is almost fully compatible with Google Earth.

Steps to import Sitefinder data into Google Earth:

When you start your query on Sitefinder, instead of choosing the results to be "Plot on Google Maps", choose "List the results in a table". On the results page highlight all the rows, except the Title row, and Copy/Paste this into a spreadsheet program like Excel or whatever. Then strip out or delete the unneeded column that has Cemetery in it. Save this file as a "comma-delimited" file or what's known as a .csv file. Start Google Earth and from the File menu choose Open and select your csv file.

The above will start a "Data Import Wizard" that wants you to select or "Specify Delimiter". Just accept the defaults as it is and hit "Next". In the next window you have to tell it to use the Latitude and Longitude fields. In the drop down boxes choose the top most Latitude coordinates (latitude always has a N or S in it) for the "Latitude field". Then the bottom one for the Longitude field (longitude will show a E or W in it). Then select "Next". The next window is to "Specify Field Types". They should be defaulted as "String", leave these as is and select "Finish". You will see a small window pop up that show the progress of the import and then it jumps Google Earth to that location/county.

That's it!

Now, I have already proved that Sitefinder is not entirely accurate with respect to mapping ALL cemeteries. But, as one of my visions for Google Earth and Genealogy was to map out cemeteries on a county by county basis. This vision was discouraged by the thought that it would be a monumental task, and would need lots of cooperation on the part of a lot of people. With Sitefinder, you are more than half way there, and now all that needs to be done is fill in the gaps of any missing cemetery locations.

Oh, on a more personal note, if we had the cemeteries programmed into our Gedcom files, making sure they are under the BURI tag. Then they will be mapped using GeoGed.com's free conversion program!

So, the vision has been re-born! Anyone out there want to jump on board with this project? Oh, I just had some more visions! Ouch! :)   <posts to follow>