History never dies
Scout collects records from cemetery in northeast Oklahoma City
Technology and genealogy recently converged at a cemetery in northeast Oklahoma City.
Grant Lyon, a member of Scouts BSA Troop 0314, led a large group of volunteers to Trice Hill Cemetery, 5101 N Coltrane, to digitize sections of the burial ground for the BillionGraves mobile application.
The groups pen ts ever al hours taking pictures of headstones and they also transcribed the information on the markers to be upxloaded to the app. They went row by row and collected information from about 1,000 headstones in the west portion of the cemetery.
The effort served as Lyon's Eagle Scout project.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Edmond teen said the project was a great way to connect together community service and genealogy. He said history and genealogy are important to his family
and faith tradition. His troop is affiliated with the Edmond Fourth Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I was glad to be able to contribute in this way,” Lyon said.
“I know that it's useful when you can use the BillionGraves and Find A Grave apps. That way you can look at the birth dates and death dates of ancestors.”
He said Trice Hill matched all the criteria he was looking for— it was well maintained but it had not been digitized.
Billion Graves describes itself as the largest resource for searchable GPS cemetery data to make such data easily accessible to people around the world.
Eagle Scout projects are one of the main sources of service projects for BillionGraves, said Savanna Sorensen, national project coordinator for the Utah-based organization.
“These projects are a great way for young men to demonstrate leadership skills as they plan and organize their projects and coordinate with cemetery managers, BillionGraves and volunteers. There is quite a bit of work involved in planning a project like this, especially if they decide to involve a lot of volunteers,” Sorensen said in an email.
“We appreciate all that these scouts do to help us preserve history.”
Lyon, 17, said he chose Trice Hill intentionally after it was suggested by Oklahoma City historian and genealogist Andre' Head. He said his former troop master Peter Adams had suggested that Head would know of a black cemetery that would benefit from the project.
Head said he was excited when Lyon approached him about the project because many Oklahoma cemeteries, particularly those in rural areas and those that are predominantly black, could use attention and support from the surrounding communities.
He said he has been told that a nationwide effort to get funding to document and digitize black cemeteries may begin soon, so the recent Eagle Scout project puts Trice Hill and Oklahoma ahead of the curve. He said eventually, he would like to start a project documenting black cemeteries all around the state.
Head, president of the Black Genealogy Research Group and co-founder of The Coltrane Group, said making birth and death information more accessible is always a good thing.
“I think it's great because it adds information. This information helps get the names correct and in genealogy, it's very important to get those names right. Any of that information is going to help clarify things for people,” he said.
Patricia Brewer, Trice Hill's office manager, said the cemetery will benefit tremendously from the project.
She said that more than 16,000 people, mostly black, are buried in the 100-year-old cemetery and she uses maps to help people find their loved ones' burial sites.
“You've got people who are always hunting up information on their ancestors,” Brewer said.
Dave Lyon, Grant's father, said he was proud of the way his son organized the cemetery gathering and planned everything out.
He said the project was a way for the teen to use his knowledge of genealogy in a different but meaningful way.
“Looking into our past and those that have gone before us is something that is very important to our church. Grant had done some work on our family history so he's seen first hand how valuable it is to have those records available,” Dave Lyon said.
“He knew that getting those records online would be helpful to people all over the world.”
Adams, who served as Lyon's Eagle Scout project coach, also expressed pride in the recent effort.
“The point of an Eagle project is all about the Scout utilizing the leadership qualities that he has and taking care of the project,” he said.
Head said he was especially pleased to see many young people participating in the recent Eagle Scout project.
“It's great to get a younger generation involved in genealogy and black history so that if we are not here, they can keep moving on,” he said.