Eagle Scout digitizes Friedens cemetery

Brian Sexton had no idea what he was getting into when he decided to digitize Friedens Cemetery for an Eagle Scout project.

He had a general idea of the process he would go through and estimated it would take two years. It took about six months more than his estimate, which is not bad considering there was a pandemic in the midst of the project.

“I didn’t know it was going to take 15 steps in between each of those steps,” said Sexton, a member of Longswamp Troop 5757, which is sponsored by Longswamp UCC in Mertztown.

Friedens Cemetery in Oley holds 3,000 cemetery plots dating to 1805.

For Sexton, that would mean transferring records of almost 5,000 people buried there that were kept on fading note cards and documented with cardboardmounted maps. He entered the information into a spreadsheet and then to a database.

Sexton wanted to digitize the records and map the cemetery so that a visitor could scan a QR code on their phone and find a grave. He started the project as a 14-year-old freshman at Brandywine Heights High School. He’s now a senior.

Even those who oversee such projects were concerned that it would take so long that he would lose interest, said his mother, Sherry Sexton.

He played multiple sports and held down part-time jobs. With the encouragement of his parents and a group of advisors that included two Kutztown University professors to help him understand the technology, he finished earlier this year.

As he got deeper into the project, Sexton had to go to the cemetery’s board to sort out conflicting information as he discovered it.

He also had to do fundraising to pay for a computer, printer and subscription to a mapping service. He sold wooden snowmen and apple dumplings that he made with the help of his family.

The contributions will pay for three years of the online service of ARCGIS, a server software and online geographic information system service.

Sexton spent too many hours to count scanning cemetery records into the computer as a digital backup. Then that data was used as a rough database, which became the foundation to document thousands of cemetery plots.

Then, fellow Scouts and their families helped with the next phase: photographing every tombstone and plot. Each of the approximately 20 volunteers were outfitted with a clippens, board, data record sheets, cameras and snacks as they set out to collect data from the 14-acre cemetery.

Each volunteer was asked to photograph and write down all details listed on the tombstones, such as: plot number, full names, birth dates, Masonic Lodge and military affiliations etc.

Next, the most time-consuming part came for Sexton: He took all this handwritten data, verified it against the cemetery records, and added it to the database.

As he progressed, family members followed his work to double-check the approximately 4,000 entries.

The oldest grave is A62, that of Laura Schlotman who was born in 1804 and died in 1805.

Also buried there are Sarah Schlotman, who died in 1827 at the age of 5; Hannah Schlotman, who died in 1860 at the age of 91 and Alexandre Schlotman, who died in 1845 at the age of 86

Sexton is said the project was beyond his expectations. It was an important project that his mother said grew from his connections to Frieden’s United Church of Christ.

“The result helps the community,” he said. “Now anyone can find relatives easier.”

To see the Frieden’s Cemetery map: https//arcg. is/1mDP0b1.

COURTESY OF HAROLD HOCH Brian Sexton, now a senior at Brandywine Heights High School, logs information from the burial information chart catalogs at Friedens Church Cemetery in Oley. The Eagle Scout project to map the graves there took him two years.

COURTESY OF HAROLD HOCH Brian Sexton at the entrance to Friedens Cemetery in Oley, where he spent two years digitizing records of all the graves. Sexton is a senior at Brandywine Heights High School.

COURTESY OF HAROLD HOCH Brian Sexton, a senior at Brandywine Heights High School, at Friedens Cemetery in Oley where he spent two years digitizing the grave records.