COVINGTON, Ky. — Students from a land surveying class unveiled a project mapping out a large northern Kentucky cemetery and charted grave spaces for future reference.

What You Need To Know

  • Cincinnati State’s land surveying certification class has spent months mapping out half of the historic Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington

  • Locating hundreds of graves was an impactful experience for classmate Jesse Waggoner

  • The university offers students a four-year surveying degree

  • During the upcoming school year, another Cincinnati State class will survey the remaining half of the cemetery 

They said the project is laying the framework for a database, ensuring people never lose track of where their loved ones are laid to rest.

Cincinnati State’s land surveying certification class has spent months mapping out half of the historic Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington. Student Jennifer Townsend said presenting the capstone project came with a sense of gratification.

“There’s never been a boundary on Linden Grove, so we were the first to do it,” she said. “We started off with locating all monumentation we could find. We pulled original deeds for the cemetery, and we went out and found everything we could to come back and tell them, 'This is where your property line lies.'”

Townsend said the deed for the cemetery is very vague.

“We had to go off of everything that was connected to the cemetery to come up with our boundary,” she said. “On top of that, they asked for a grave location.”

Locating hundreds of graves was an impactful experience for fellow student Jesse Waggoner.

“It was neat to see how much history was here in Covington,” Waggoner said. “I think it’s important to document this information, as what we’re doing now is setting up the groundwork for an online-based system to where people can go through and find loved ones and see stones that maybe they don’t live nearby.”

Waggoner said the condition of some of the graves added to the challenge of the project.

“There (are) a lot of stones over there that are sandstone, and the weather around here has worn them down, so there's going to be quite a few of these graves that we won’t be able to make out," he said. "But the hope is that we can make out the people around them and then slowly work our way into being able to identify some of these unmarked graves."

Cincinnati State offers students a four-year surveying degree, and Townsend said she's proud of her work. 

“It's very important because of the history aspect," Townsend said. "There’s a lot that went into it. It’s basically the framework of how the whole city and how Covington was laid out."

“If no one knows how to do it, you lose that generation of information.”

Another Cincinnati State class will survey the remaining half of the cemetery during the upcoming school year. 

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