Digital project maps 250-year-old Mazsalaca cemetery

A digital map is helping visitors find graves in the 250-year-old Mazsalaca cemetery, where burials have taken place since 1773, LSM reported. Candles will be lit there this evening to remember the dead.

The cemetery is among the largest and oldest rural cemeteries in Latvia. Its digitisation began in 2016, when cemetery manager Anta Ķirse started recording graves and entering the information into the Cemety database. Digitising cemeteries is now a requirement for municipalities under a law that came into force this year.

A map at the cemetery entrance helps visitors locate graves. They can search the database by a person’s name and surname. Ķirse said the cemetery’s age and the lack of records had made the work extensive.

She began the project after finding that graves in Jelgava were searchable through Cemety. She measured the cemetery section by section, recording graves with headstones and marking unidentifiable plots with question marks.

A large paper map drawn in 1991 by former teacher Uldis Dreimanis, along with books listing names, also helped her enter the information. The database makes the deceased’s name, surname, and birth and death dates publicly available. Ķirse said she also added life stories using records entrusted to her by the Mazsalaca Lutheran church, including congregation cards.