Finding Graves in Puerto Rico

As part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's program for Young Women called Personal Progress, Laura and I decided to embark upon grave finding for one of her required projects.  (Having a blog for at least six months is one of my projects). She committed to spending ten hours taking picture of graves, writing down all available information and then uploading them to findagrave.com 


The reason Laura decided to do this project was to help people with their genealogy.  Many people have relatives in Puerto Rico, but the government records aren't always well kept.  This will give those people some data to have as a starting point, at least.


We have gone out the past three Saturdays and have taken pictures and written for about an hour at a time.  

Then we come home and upload the information.  It is a very peaceful time.  We have taken pictures of over 300 graves so far.  

Something interesting about Puerto Rican graves is that very few have birth dates on them.  

(Rec. de esposa y familia means "Remembered by wife and family")

Another interesting thing is that many of the graves are just marked with an aluminum name plate and death date like the one below. 

You can also see how close the graves are together. Many people are buried in the same plot. 

The part of the cemetery that I am working in seems older, although most people appeared to be buried in the late 60's.  Many of the graves have sunk with the shifting earth and some are buried altogether.  The one below, I had to dig away the dirt just to see a little of the name.

The picture below demonstrates the shifting ground as well.