Springdale Cemetery going digital with preservation efforts

As Springdale Cemetery approaches its 200th year, its leaders have tapped some professionals to help maintain the site’s history.

The Springdale Cemetery Association sought the help of Amanda Peters, an archivist at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and Lazarus Cemetery Mapping in its effort to preserve old genealogical documents, map cemetery plots and digitize records.

“There’s family history, artifacts, that we want to make sure are available to the next generation,” said Joan Mellon, a member of the cemetery board.

The cemetery’s 200th anniversary is in 2027. About 2,000 people are buried in the land along School Street.

“It seems they have some really great cemetery records there,” Peters said.

Peters said she was a consultant to the cemetery association and gave its members tips on how to organize records.

“It’s very exciting that they’re getting their records digitized,” she said.

Peters also shared techniques on how to make the documents easily accessible for people searching for them in the future.

“She helped plan ways to maintain our records in a way that they would remain historically sound,” Mellon said.

Crews from Lazarus visited Springdale Cemetery on Tuesday and scanned documents, including deeds, pictures and other historical records.

They also took pictures of each headstone and flew a drone over the site so a digital map can be made.

Lazarus will create a public access link for the cemetery for people to search for their relatives and other genealogical infomation, said Jacob White of Lazarus.

It usually takes about six months for the work to be completed, White said.

Lazarus’ work will make it easier for people to find graves and make the documents easier to read, Mellon said. Some of the documents are handwritten.

“Having these histories saved is really important to us,” Mellon said.