Research · cemetery records

Victorian cemetery record search.

The website and register search behind the names index, covering all 26 cemetery and funerary findings on the project map. It records the downloaded source material, normalised full-register exports, and a conservative index of Chinese names or likely Chinese-name candidates.

Main result

720 sourced rows from 10 cemetery and object sources.

The combined extracted index is published as extracted/chinese_names.csv inside the cemetery records folder.

657 high-confidence rows

An explicit Chinese-grave dataset, Chinese cemetery section, source annotation, Chinese characters, or a recorded China, Canton or Hong Kong birthplace.

63 medium-confidence rows

The source context and a historical Chinese-form name support the match, but the register does not explicitly record ethnicity.

694 distinct displayed name strings

Not necessarily 694 distinct individuals: spelling variants, aliases and duplicate historical registrations may exist.

Largest source sets

Melbourne General Cemetery (534 rows), Ballarat Old and early Ballarat records (82), Echuca (47), Yackandandah (25), Creswick (14) and Whroo (12). Individual named evidence was also found for Beechworth, Linton, Moliagul/Inkerman and the Bi Jiang tombstone. The Melbourne total includes Lee Kee Yook, whose CAFHOV record has no title but identifies the person in its “Other names” field.

No person has been classified from a modern surname alone. Medium-confidence rows should be verified against the original record before publication as Chinese biographical data.

Folder guide

Where the evidence lives.

cemetery_source_manifest.csv

One row for every cemetery finding, with the website attempted, access outcome, files saved and recommended next route.

raw/

Source files as downloaded: official spreadsheets and JSON queries, website pages, reports and memorial photographs.

raw/cafhov_mgc_collection.csv

CAFHOV’s complete Melbourne General Cemetery metadata, including name variants, pronunciation, ancestral-origin fields, dates, plots, notes and photograph links.

extracted/chinese_names.csv

The combined, source-attributed name index.

extracted/*full_register.csv

Cemetery-specific CSV files and convenient UTF-8 conversions of the downloaded data.

scripts/extract_names.py

Reproducible extraction and normalisation code.

Important limitations

What “Chinese” means in the output.

“Chinese” means that the historical source explicitly says so, or that the row is a candidate supported by the documented evidence basis. It does not establish a person’s identity by itself. Cemetery registers can contain errors, Anglicised spellings, reversed name order, aliases and repeated entries.

Creswick Compartment 6 is historically associated mainly with Chinese burials, but it is a mixed compartment. Its name-pattern matches are therefore marked medium confidence. The Whroo and non-explicit Echuca matches are marked the same way.
The early Ballarat transcription preserves an offensive historical classification in some source cells. The combined CSV mentions that term only when explaining the verbatim evidence used for selection; it is not present-day language endorsed by this project.
Several custodians expose only individual searches or paid or manual research services. No attempt was made to bypass access controls or scrape a service that did not offer a supported public export. These unresolved sites are clearly identified in the manifest.

Principal online sources

Where the records were consulted.

Chinese Graves at Melbourne General Cemetery Yackandandah Cemetery burial search Creswick Cemetery deceased search Creswick Chinese cemetery history Echuca Cemetery records Whroo Cemetery interment register Ballarat early burial spreadsheet catalogue record Beechworth Cemetery family research Linton Chinese Pioneers memorial Dunolly Museum: Inkerman Cemetery inside Moliagul Cemetery

Rebuilding the extracts

Reproduce the name index.

The script uses Python’s standard library plus xlrd for the two legacy .xls workbooks:

python3 -m pip install -r cemetery_records/scripts/requirements.txt
python3 cemetery_records/scripts/extract_names.py

The source files are retained, so every selected row can be independently checked and the matching policy can be made broader or narrower later.