Kahwatsi:re Genealogy and Historical Society Cemetery Project

The Kahwatsi:re Akwesasne & Genealogy & Historical Society holds a family tree database with over 10,000 names with some families dating back to the 1500s. We have access to search the St. Regis Catholic Church records, Kansas Applications from the early 1900s, published obituaries and many other resources.

This summer the Society embarked on the 'Cemetery Project' – collecting information from nine local cemeteries and loading this information onto the Billion Graves website. A website with literally millions of cemetery headstones collected by thousands of volunteers located around the world.

The Akwesasne Genealogy Society earned a grant from the Mohawk of Akwesasne Community Trust fund for the amount of $32,000 to hire staff, purchase supplies with the goal of collecting information on local headstones. This information was collected by three summer students – all of whom have a background in history and related studies. The staff includes Grace Point, Tiarraray Square and Jamiee Lazore.

The students worked with various local churches, gathered information off each headstone in the cemetery by photographing it before and after it was cleaned. They followed strict guideline, so as not to harm the headstone or to cause further damage if the headstone was cracked, broken or tipped over. Headstones had to be wet first and soft sponges were used to clean them, a before photo and after photo was taken of each headstone. If a headstone was tipped over or unreadable, they left it as is.

The Society included in their budget to replace ten headstones with small plaques. They also gathered information on veterans which will be shared with the American Legion Post 1479.

Once the headstone information was collected, the students transferred the information to the Billion Graves website where anyone can access the longitude and latitude on the website, a photo of the headstone, and for some, it includes an obituary.

So, say someone living in California could visit the Billion Graves website, type in a name into the search bar and they could see exactly where the headstone is located and any information on the headstone.

The Genealogy Society is also working on the 'Charles Cook Papers' – which included 1500 pages of old Mohawk names. The Charles Cook Papers are dated to 1954 when Cook, who worked with the government at the time collected names, their meaning, their clan and where the name came from. This information will be given to The Mohawk Nation, as they belong here, and non-natives will not have access to these names.

The Society is also working on an Obituary Project – literally cutting out obituaries, scanning them and matching them with gravesites and tombstones. The Society will host a Heritage Fair this fall and Akwesasronon will have an opportunity to 'look up' their own name. In addition to the Obituary Project, the Society is working on the Kansas Papers – where families were forced to register their names and family members names in order to move everyone from Akwesasne to Kansas.

Society members have made short videos on their projects that can be viewed on their website. They plan to make a short video on how to navigate and access information on the Billion Graves website to find a headstone.

The project has gathered information on almost 2000 headstones in local public cemeteries. If you or your family have a private cemetery and you would like your family's headstones to be included in this project, please call Grace Point at the Native North American Traveling College at 613 932 9452 ext. 231 or on her cell at 613 861 2780A project member will work with the family to visit the cemetery to map it out.