The National Cemetery Administration (NCA), a division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, has been undertaking an extensive project to verify the burial records in its database. This is a painstaking process of comparing the records in the database with original records of interment. The NCA operates 119 cemeteries in thirty-nine states and territories, including an additional thirty-three soldiers' lots in private cemeteries, all containing more than 2.3 million remains of veterans and their families.

In 1993, the NCA installed a new computerized system of managing interment records. Up until then, records were recorded on ROI forms (record of interment), which were later microfilmed. So in order to perform a search, NCA staff formerly had to browse through microfilms. Looking up records was particularly difficult under this system, since all microfilmed records were organized by year of interment and then alphabetized from there. Finding a record meant first knowing the interment year, a piece of information many people did not have. The computer system now allows the NCA to look up records faster and using less information.

All NCA cemeteries began using the computer system in 1993 for all new burials moving forward. However, adding the prior records to the new system would prove to be a daunting task. To do this, the NCA hired a contractor who digitized each microfilmed ROI form into an image. From there, optical character recognition (OCR) tools were used to “read” imaged text and then transform it into computer data. All computer data was stored in a special database that the NCA refers to as "the priors."

The NCA estimates that the imaging and OCR process yielded an 80 percent accuracy rate. Some ROI forms were handwritten and required manual transcription. On other forms, the OCR failed because the type was too faint to read, or because it was not centered in the boxes. Additionally, the ROI forms changed shape and style many times over the years, causing even more transformation problems. Some veterans' remains were disinterred and moved to private cemeteries by their families. Obviously, the NCA could not remove these records from microfilm, so they were still imaged, read, and stored in the priors; these records also affect the accuracy rate.

Before any of the data from the priors can be added to the new system, each record must be manually verified as being accurate and current. Hence, the need for the verification project.

The NCA has placed the priors on a computer system that can be accessed by each of the national cemeteries. Each cemetery has been asked to verify these records. Cemetery staffs will get a records from the priors and compare them with records maintained locally. In some cases, the staff will actually visit the gravesites to verify that someone is there and will even use information from the tombstones.

Some cemeteries have been very active in verifying records, while others have not even started. The NCA currently allocates funds to the cemeteries to pay for overtime and to hire outside workers. The NCA predicts that they will have to hire a contractor to get the verification project completed in a more timely fashion. About 10,000 to 15,000 records are verified each month, and about 30 to 35 percent of the priors have been verified so far.

In some cases, the cemeteries are finding that they have interment records that the NCA does not have. Somehow, the original ROI form was misplaced or destroyed and was never microfilmed. In this case, the cemeteries are adding their own records to the new computer system.

Cemeteries outside of the NCA have been making use of the new computer system as well. The Army has begun using it for cemeteries it administers, including Arlington National Cemetery. Some state veterans’ cemeteries have started using it also. Records of all new burials are being added to those of the NCA, though records added previous to the new computer system have yet to be converted.

Some Web sites have obtained copies of the verified and unverified records and are publishing them online. Interment.net is currently incorporating them and has marked all unverified records with an asterisk (*). The NCA was also asked if it would encourage the public to come forward to provide verification. However, the NCA indicated that many of these burials occurred more than a hundred years ago, and in no way could someone today vouch for such a burial, especially without having copies of original records.

Other Web sites have published these records also, but have failed to indicate which records are unverified. As a result, some users have been shocked with the results. In one case, the mother of a deceased child visited one such Web site and found her child listed in the wrong cemetery. She thought the NCA had moved her child to a different cemetery without notifying her! The NCA had to explain that she had found an unverified record and that the Web site had failed to explain this.

The NCA cannot estimate when it will complete the project. Administrators are still deciding whether to hire a contractor to expedite the verification. Each cemetery has been allotted funds to conduct the verification, but it is not known how they are using the money. In the meantime, plans are in the works for an online database search tool to be used once the verification is complete.

Steve Paul Johnson is the editor of "The Cemetery Column" and webmaster of Cemetery Records Online. This article is being reprinted with the author’s permission.

Source: United States Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration.