Know any girl scouts? One troop took on a project they will remember for a long long time. They cataloged burial records. What a great way to both get service hours and introduce these young girls to family history. The article was posted in The Republic out of Columbus, Indiana.
Girl Scouts catalog burial records at embattled cemetery to help with research efforts
MARC CHASE The Times
MUNSTER, Ind. — The first trip the Girl Scouts of Troop 10051 made to Hammond’s Oak Hill Cemetery revealed a troubled, unkempt burial ground with more graves than the girls thought they could count.
But now the eight girls of the Munster Mints Neighborhood are doing just that at the 21-acre Hohman Avenue cemetery. They are counting and cataloging the burial records in a computer program to make grave site information more accessible to the public.
It’s a welcome story for many whose loved ones are buried in the embattled cemetery, which contains an estimated 10,000-plus graves, including those of Hammond founders and Civil War veterans.
In the past several months, revelations of mismanagement, discarded headstones, unmarked graves and disinterred human bones have plagued the cemetery.
Now Girl Scout leader Kerry Connor, a federal public defender by day, and her troop of eight teenage girls are logging more than 10 hours of volunteer time per month to help make the situation better.
Fifty hours into the project, the girls have entered the records — including names, last known addresses and burial dates — of 1,000 of Oak Hill’s deceased into a searchable Microsoft Access database. When finished, the North Township trustee’s office plans to put the database online for anyone to search.