White crosses now stand on the previously unmarked graves of soldiers in Te Puke’s old cemetery.

A $1000 funding grant from Western Bay of Plenty District Council has allowed six members of the Te Puke Heritage Group, who are researching and photographing headstones, to honour servicemen in the process.

“Some of those we find buried simply didn’t have family so it’s quite sad to think of them being forgotten,” said group convener Christine Clement.

The project to find and acknowledge people in unmarked graves began in 2021. Volunteers adding cemetery records and information about the deceased to the Find a Grave website started coming across obvious gaps in the plot history.

“When we find the name of someone buried without a marker, we research them using birth, death or marriage certificates and newspapers,” said Clement. “We discovered some of the unmarked graves were for World War I serviceman, so we had crosses made and erected on these plots.”

So far 15 crosses have been built by Te Puke Men’s Shed. Every so often, though, a mystery is unveiled.

“Names are easily searchable but sometimes we come across weird situations in which we can’t find anything about them. They literally don’t exist, and we realise that for whatever reason, they were living under a false name. We wonder if we’ll ever know the true story.”

Clement said volunteers have just started researching the new Te Puke cemetery and have noticed an unexpected flow-on effect from their work.

“Since we’ve been tidying the cemetery and adding the burials to the internet people have been cleaning up their own family graves which has been absolutely wonderful to see.”