St. John's
Washington, IN
Project Details
Cemetery Type
Catholic
# of Burials
6,200
Location
Washington, IN
Services
Mapping, Record Digitization
Types of Records
Ledger books, paper maps, excel sheet
The Challenge
St. John's Cemetery in Washington Indiana is owned and operated by Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church in Washington, IN. They had been operating on paper records since their inception. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of their historical records to a fire. This meant there was missing information throughout the cemetery, and their records needed reclaimed. The missing records lead to inaccuracies in selling plots because they were missing deeds that had been lost in the fire. Our Lady of Hope asked Lazarus to put the pieces of the puzzle together for their cemetery.
Our Process
Because of the loss of records, Lazarus being on-site was of the up most importance. We made sure to walk by every single headstone in the cemetery and document both names, and dates from the headstones. This allowed us to gather the names of any known burials in the cemetery. While out in the cemetery, we also flew our drone to capture a high quality image of the cemetery for the new digital map.
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Inside the Catholic Church, we worked with the staff to figure out which records we needed to scan. There were paper maps, ledger books with deeds, and an excel sheet. The excel sheet consisted of both owners and burials within the cemetery. We then scanned/photographed the deeds and the paper maps. Back at our offices, all of these deeds were transcribed into digital form. Our transcription team then also typed out all of the names from being out in the cemetery (the names and dates that we gathered from the headstones). Combining their excel sheet, our transcribed headstone information, and our transcribed deeds, we now had a complete list of information for St. John's. Our team then found all of the duplicated records, and deleted them out of the system. This left us with a complete list of owners and burials, along with a new set of burials in the system from any names that were lost in the fire, but reclaimed from the headstone.
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Lazarus then used the paper maps, the drone image, the on-site ground data, and the new database to create an accurate digital map of the cemetery.
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The Result
St. John's now has a complete list of burials within their cemetery. They have burials back in the system that were always out in the cemetery, but lost in their records. St. John's also has an accurate digital map that allows them to find burials, owners, and plots in seconds.
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All of their records are now secure for the future. They have also ensured the longevity of their cemetery as whoever is next in line to take the cemetery manager position, has no more mess left for them.