Mt. Juliet High student to geo-tag graves to help others find ancestors - The Tennessean
May 17, 2019Juliet High School freshman plans to document graves at a Nashville cemetery this weekend to help people locate and find information about ancestors through online searches. Ty Smith, 15, is a Boy Scout with Troop 439 in Mt. Juliet. Ty plans to geo-tag graves at Calvary Cemetery at 1001 Lebanon Road in Nashville on Saturday and Sunday as an Eagle Scout project using the app BillionGraves. The process will include taking photos of graves and transcribing information such as names and birth and death dates for a data base for people to search on BillionGraves.com. BillionGraves bills itself as a resource for searchable GPS cemetery data that utilizes information from people who collect headstone images and transcribe personal information on the images. Ty and father Andrew Smith have opened the project to the community to document as many graves as possible. Calvary Cemetery has approximately 18,000 graves, according to office personnel. “I believe this Eagle service project will give me the opportunity to help other people who may be looking for long-lost relatives of their own,” Ty, who plays the trumpet in the Mt. Juliet High band, said. “I’m hoping that this project will help to preserve the record of both the well-decorated graves sites as well as the simple and decaying markers.” Keep up with what’s new throughout Middle Tennessee with a digital subscription that starts at just 99 cents per month. ...