So my first confession will be: I gave up on mapping graves in cemeteries. There’s a cemetery up the road from my current location and I wanted to map all the residents with the finest location equipment and databases and maps…….and it just didn’t work out. I realized in the middle of it not working out I’m not the right person to do it. There are other people with a lot more experience. I really don’t think the group wants it mapped also….and Ultimately it may not even need mapped. There are things I do well and things I don’t. So no more Cemeteries…..
BUT…………..
So my Dad was one of 7 kids. Two died at child birth. Of those 5 – Four left the small town and one stayed. In 1991 Dad’s youngest sister (Mary) died of a stroke – she was the one who stayed and the death was unexpected. I would have been 20 at the time and Dad would have been somewhere near 46 when this happened. I remember the funeral and a little of the burial. That was 35 years ago. I was 2 years into college and was invincible. I think about her more these days because of last year’s excitement.
About 4 times a year – maybe 5 – there is a Bluegrass Festival where Dad grew up and we occasionally stop in at the family cemetery. After last year I did give it a little thought of “Would I want to be buried up here?”. I decided that while I am able to get along with about anyone I probably didn’t want to spend a lot of time here just laying around. I can’t change cemeteries every 10 years once it’s over though….or could I……
During the last Bluegrass day we decided to swing by Mary’s grave since it’s been 10 years since Dad had been there and 35 for me. Except….we couldn’t find her. Dad remembered if being over in this direction and I sort of remembered it being in another direction. Google Maps was no help because we couldn’t remember the name of the cemetery and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t shown anyway. OpenStreetMap was no help. FindAGrave was no help because I looked up the wrong last name. There were no signs and there might have been a sign once but was gone for whatever reason.
So I decided……Maybe there is still room to map cemeteries.
- Tennessee has the Historic Cemetery Commission and they have a map. No I haven’t counted Cemeteries in the county. Yet.
- You have 7.5 minute historic topographic maps that cover the area.
- You have publicly available parcel data – and that has 57ish cemeteries listed.
- FindaGrave has probably 160ish cemeteries listed for the county.
- OSM has 64 listed.
So why not make an effort to get the cemeteries into OSM. I know there is more than can be done like contacting a local museum or some county historic group. I don’t want to get that involved BUT possibly get the cemeteries corrected and added with a few blog articles might spur more involvement. Plus I like staying busy plus it might give me a reason to go have an adventure one day.
More fun with OpenStreetMap.
