In celebration of family history month, West Gippsland Genealogical Society recently presented Drouin Cemetery Trust with five books detailing records and research of the cemetery.
The society transcribed the cemetery headstones starting in March 1991. A group of 14 members, hand wrote the headstone stories and mapped out the graves and produced a plan of the grave positions, then typed up and compiled the gathered information into a book that was presented to the trust in 1992. Some of these headstone no longer exist.
In 2012, a group of WGGS members photographed the headstones. The photos were indexed and the first book was updated and parent details were added where possible.
Further research was done to find death notices, funeral details, obituaries - much of which was obtained from copies of The Warragul Gazette and the Drouin Independent newspapers, as well as Trove because many notices were published in the Argus.
Recently the society was given scrapbooks from deceased estates with collections of obituaries and local interest, these have been scanned and are available for research. Any local content scrapbooks from the community are very welcome.
The Drouin Cemetery Project was put on hold a number of times as other projects took precedence - five World War I books being printed from 2018 -2024, was a big undertaking.
In 2016, Baw Baw Shire granted the WGGS $1200 towards the purchase of 50 death certificates relating to early burials in the Drouin Cemetery. From this grant 157 burials were proven to have been interred in Drouin.
Other local cemeteries also benefited from this project as the certificates have multiple death records of local people, and where they were buried. Many more certificates were purchased by the society over the years to verify burial details.
The five books (some 826 pages) in the collection, cover some of the history of the cemetery and reflect the continued interest and involvement of the West Gippsland Genealogical Society in working with the Cemetery Trust to preserve history. It includes photos, plans, an index of more than 5300 burials, family details and headstone/plaque transcriptions.
The project is an inspiration to the dedicated commitment of members of the West Gippsland Genealogical Society, who give their time and energy to make available the local resources of family history for the future.
A core work group meet every Tuesday to scan, index and research and many others work from home indexing and transcribing, subjects such as the local rates, births deaths and marriages.