This index has been compiled by Mrs T. Thompson of Kalgoorlie from the following cemeteries and cemetery records:
- Old Boulder - Anglican Section of the Cemetery Board Register 224 names
- Headstones all denominations 41 names
- Roman Catholic 189 names
- Baptist 12 names
- Presbyterian 69 names
- Church of Christ 9 names
- General 6 names
- Methodist section 290 names
- Bulong Headstones 19 names
- Kanowna Cemetery Board Register
- Ora Banda Cemetery
- Siberia Cemetery.
Entry into the index is by name of person being buried and information given is what appears on the headstone or what is transcribed in the burial register. This can include age; relatives eg: parents, wives, husbands, children; date of death, where lived (from headstone) plus denomination, Officiating clergyman, date of burial, name of Undertaker, residence of friends (if known), remarks (if any), grave number section and subsection (from Register).
The Western Australian Biographical Index (WABI) is a highly used resource at the State Library of Western Australia. A recent generous contribution by the Friends of Battye Library (FOBS) has enabled SLWA to have the original handwritten index cards scanned and later transcribed.
The dataset contains: a csv file with data describing card number, card text and url link to image of the original handwritten card.
The transcription was crowd-sourced and we are aware that there are some data quality issues including:
- Some cards are missing
- Transcripts are crowdsourced so may contain spelling errors and possibly missing information
- Some cards are crossed out. Some of these are included in the collection and some are not
- Some of the cards contain relevant information on the back (usually children of the person mentioned). This info should be on the next consecutive card
- As the information is an index, collected in the 1970s from print material, it is incomplete. It is also unreferenced.
It is still a very valuable dataset as it contains a wealth of information about early settlers in Western Australia. It is of particular interest to genealogists and historians
