OXFORD, Ohio — Families trying to find their ancestors will now have a new way to do it after a cemetery project. Educators used digital mapping to upgrade a cemetery with missing records.

What You Need To Know

  • The historic Oxford cemetery had missing records for people buried there and outdated maps that were making it difficult for families to find people

  • Miami University educators started a project to locate and map the grave sites and found graves dating back to 1817 

  • Educators put that information in a digital map to help families navigate and trace their history

Mike Green and his crew know how to keep the historic Oxford Cemetery from getting overgrown but what he didn’t know was exactly where all the graves were.

“When people come to look, this (outdated map) is what I've got to show them but then they're like, okay, where's this road go?" said Green. 

He said for years, the cemetery relied on outdated maps, missing records and many times he said directing someone was a guess.

“Where is this road? And it's like, oh, the roads aren't there. I think back in the day, those were old pathways that they used to get up into the section," said Green. 

Robbyn Abbitt, the associate director of the Geo Spacial Analysis Center at Miami University in Oxford, set out to change that.

“We use this (outdated map) to try and figure out, because within each of these these boxes in here, these lots in these plots," said Abbitt. 

She said she and her students found headstones dating back to 1817, some with no records.

“It could be somebody else that they're related to or somebody knew who bought the lot that's interred there,” said Abbitt. 

It’s the reason they put them on the map. They added thousands of headstones on a new digital map.

“So we did take these maps and we did a process called geo-referencing to try and figure out, OK, this place belongs here on the ground. So, this is where this part of this map should be to try and give the city an idea of where all of these plots are, actually where some of the boundaries might be," said Abbitt.

It's all an effort to help connect families to their ancestry that might be lying at this historic cemetery.

“When you're out here spending hours upon hours weeding and you're looking at every headstone when you go past, it's amazing the names that you recognize, and it's even better when they have questions on locating their relatives. You can give them an answer now," said Green.

Abbitt said the digital map is available online for anyone who thinks they may have a connection to the historic cemetery. They've also added where veterans are located on the digital maps.