Elmwood Cemetery unveils new database for records searches
After several years, and setbacks from a global pandemic, Elmwood Cemetery has officially released their public database.
The database, although still in its infancy, allows Memphians and visitors to look through records of those who are buried in the cemetery, which has been in use since 1852. It also provides directs via GPS to direct visitors to the burial site of specific people.
"We want our family members and you know, people who are interested in the history of their city to be able to access that information quickly. And to feel more connected down with cemetery and the history of their community," said Kim Bearden, executive director of Elmwood Cemetery. "Another part of this project was adding GPS locations to each person buried here. So you can get driving directions to grave sites, from the website, and it's free of charge. So even when Elmwood staff is not present, guests can come to Elmwood and still find what they're looking for."
The project ran up a bill of about $43,000, which was partially covered with approximately $21,000 from the Community Foundation of Memphis' Strengthening Nonprofits Grant. As a history buff himself, the decision to help Memphis' oldest active cemetery was clear for President Robert Fockler.
The Community Foundation regularly invests in history focused projects and wants to make local history more accessible, Fockler said
"And this is all about that," Fockler said. "I mean, look at the records of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. It is jaw jaw dropping — just the human toll taken by it — and then the stories of heroism that went with the stories of loss. I just think that it's hard to understand it's hard to understand our present without understanding our past, and it's hard to understand our past without understanding what's at Elmwood."
The multi-year project is not over yet, though. With over 160 years of burials, "the vault" in the office building at Elmwood Cemetery holds records from every year the cemetery has been active.
"Many of the paper records that we have here, that tie in with the burial location of burial locations, those are not uploaded to the, to the database, yet, it's going to be years before this database is complete," Bearden said. "So those records that are not yet available to the public will become so slowly over time."
She does not worry that the existence of the online database will render the original documents obsolete, but she thinks it will help the oldest ones survive even longer.
"I certainly don't want to keep the physical records that we've got tucked away for all eternity. That's definitely not the goal," Bearden said. "The purpose of making these records, to scan them and make them available to the public online, is to preserve those papers. Every time you handle a piece of paper, you deposit oil from your fingertips, it gets creased, it might get dusty, you run the risk of losing it every time you move it around. And so doing it this way is another safeguard for those for those original records."
The database also allows the public to upload "memories" of some of those buried at Elmwood Cemetery. Through this, Bearden and Elmwood's historians can crowdsource additional records while working to upload the ones they have on their own digitization.
"If your grandmother, great grandmother, great, great grandmother are buried here, and you possess letters that they wrote or pictures of them or portraits, you can submit those things to be added to their individual page," Bearden said. "And we will approve that. It's just a fantastic way to add to public historic record."
Lucas Finton is a news reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Elmwood Cemetery completes new online database
