Eagle Scout Project By: Evan Towle

Cemetery Documentation The cemetery behind the First Presbyterian Church of Sparta has faulty records and no idea who was buried in the cemetery or where they were located. My idea was to re-record the cemetery to have easy to access records for both the church and the public. I decided that to make it easy for families to make both written records and a visual map that showed the orientation of the graveyard. My motive for the project was to enable family members to come to the cemetery in the middle of town and be able to find their loved ones without wondering aimlessly throughout the graveyard for hours until they found them.

Personal Motivation Our troop meetings were at the church where this cemetery was located so when I found the cemetery was lacking in record keeping and general upkeep I wanted to do something about it. Also, while on a family trip in Anaconda, Montana, my Mom and I were visiting a local graveyard to see if we could find her family member. We were unsuccessful at first but eventually found a directory that guided us directly to who she was looking for. I remembered this and saw how happy my Mom was when she found her loved one. I wanted to help people find who they were looking for and allow them to feel the happiness my Mom felt when she found who she was looking for.

Rationale The plan sub-divided the graveyard into sections and send people into each section and to record the names, birth and death dates, and whether they were a war veteran. There were 19 sections and a total of 40 people who said they would assist me in my project so I concluded that pairs of two should walk through each section and record the names. While the groups were collecting the data from the tombstones my role was to answer any questions regarding which section is which, how to record the data, how to delegate duties to each volunteer, and how to orchestrate the process in a refined manner. After the data was recorded, I tabulated the data in an Excel file which served as the records for the Church when the project was finished.

This phase took two weeks of working every day bit by bit on it. The tABULATION Phase The collection of data took two days of a total of forty volunteers working tirelessly the gravestone information. After this phase concluded, I took their filled worksheets and transferred every one into an Excel file. I typed the name of the person, the birth and death dates, and then sorted them alphabetically and by section number. This phase took two weeks of working every day bit by bit on it. In the end, the total number of headstones surpassed 4,000 after the church had told me they expected approximately 2,200 headstones to be in the graveyard.

Work in action These are a few of my friends working through the gravestones. Behind the graves you can see the church that the cemetery lays behind.

The Finished Product This was the map I created utilizing Google Maps and Paint to make an easy to read guide for visitors to use as navigation. This guide is printable and the church has copies of them to distribute to graveyard visitors. This was the finished written records of the data that was collected and tabulated. The cemetery data was sorted alphabetically and numerically to ease the use of finding loved ones people were searching for.

The result The project passed inspection from the local committee and was seen as one of the best things the church has received. I donated a copy of the project to the Sparta National Historical Society so they can archive the project and have it reference right now and as a foundation for future additions. My project advisor was ecstatic with the result and said he was proud of the immense amount of work I had been able to finish despite the short amount of time to plan and the obstacles I had to overcome . The biggest obstacle was the cold weather in December but I had fantastic friends that came outside and donated hours of their time to help me earn the rank of Eagle. The project took approximately 200 man hours of planning, collection, tabulation, and review and was seen as one of the best Eagle Scout projects my troop had ever seen.

The End This is the picture of me after my Eagle Scout Ceremony that would not have been possible without my required project that gave the town new records of the local cemetery.