Case Studies
Every cemetery is unique and they all have different problems that arise.
Here are a few examples of challenges we see cemeteries face, and how we fix them with cemetery management software.
Case Study 1: Southern Indiana - Missing information
A Southern Indiana cemetery we worked with had its fair share of difficulties over the years. They had experienced embezzlement, managers burying people in the wrong locations, burials that were not ever recorded in their records, and more! Their records were very sparse and contained a lot of missing information. This led to their records and map being inaccurate. Since we actually travel to the cemetery, we see and record every single headstone. We were able to reclaim the missing records for them by doing so. Any burial that they had no record for, we created a record for it. Any burial that was actually in a different spot than their records said was fixed on the map we created for them. After our work was done, they had a brand new cemetery. Their cemetery contained accurate and up to date records, as well as an accurate and up to date map.
Case Study 2: Dallas, TX -Turning lots into rows
A cemetery in Dallas, TX we worked with wanted to make major changes to its cemetery. The first manager they had when the cemetery formed buried people in lots. The manager that took his spot buried people in rows, and abandoned the idea of burying people in lots. Essentially, there was no rhyme or reason anymore to the burials. There were random transitions from rows to lots, and random burials throughout the cemetery. This made it very difficult to locate burials as well as find the open plots that the cemetery could sell. Since the cemetery was in visible rows, the manager asked if we could relabel every space so they were in nice neat rows. This got rid of the random lots, single graves, and odd transitions from one section to another. Once we re-classified every burial into its respective row, we were able to go back and find all of the open plots. We were able to see how many spaces were actually available now that the cemetery was neat and organized. The cemetery is now divided into 4 neat sections. Each of these 4 sections contains nice and neat numbered rows. This allows the manager to easily find burial locations, and see what he has open for sale.
Case Study 3: Central Missouri - Starting fresh with new land
A cemetery in Central Missouri that we worked with had just purchased some undeveloped land. We had went through their cemetery and scanned all of their paper records, digitized all of them, and mapped out their cemetery. Their cemetery was now up to date and organized, but they also had some undeveloped land that had yet to have burials in it. We were able to map out this undeveloped land so that they were able to start selling plots and burying people from a clean slate.
Case Study 4: Central Indiana - Losing records to a fire
A cemetery in central Indiana we worked with had unfortuantely lost a lot of its records in a horrible fire. This is actually fairly common among historical cemeteries, and something we see quite often. Because Lazarus Cemetery Mapping travels to the cemetery, we were able to help them reclaim a lot of these records. The deeds and original plot owner information may have been destroyed, but we were able to reclaim a lot of the lost burial information becase of the headstones. Writing down the names, dates, and locations of every single headstone in the cemetery, we were able to reconcile what was missing and reclaim the lost burial information.
Case Study 5: Milwaukee, WI - 70,000 pieces of paper
A cemetery in Milwuakee, WI had been operating on paper records for decades. This became too much to manage, and they wanted to switch to a software. Most companies request all documents already be in some sort of digital form before they will work with you. We understand this can be nearlly impossible for most cemeteries, or at least take years to complete. We were able to digitize over 80,000 records from nearly 70,000 documents. This allowed them to smoothly migrate into a software.