New Forest Cemetery

Project Title: New Forest Cemetery

Description: Over the course of its long history, Utica’s New Forest Cemetery has been abandoned and revived twice. Its intriguing but fragmented history makes the site an excellent candidate for digitization. Originally founded in 1886, the non-profit cemetery is the resting place of a variety of notables, including a US senator, William Howard Taft’s vice-president, state governors, city mayors, and many members of the Proctor family, for whom the eponymous art institute is partly named. In collaboration with the Oneida County History Center and the Geosciences Department at Hamilton College, Digital Initiatives, Scholarship, and Collaboration (DISC) is creating a searchable, geographically-accurate digital map of the most visited section of the cemetery, 11a. This consisted of flying a drone over the area and using the resulting photographs to craft an georeferenced map of the grounds. DISC staff and interns then gathered data from grave markers, individually photographing each and recording name, birthdate, related family, and veteran status. With this new information, DISC produced a StoryMap (an interactive webpage) combining pictures of the graveyard, a thorough timeline of its history, and the aforementioned map. By deploying a variety of methods to log headstones that were eroded or damaged, including taking rubbings, assiduously scouring other databases, and comparing graves to others in the area, the team documented over 200 graves. The community-based project will act as a lasting reference that can be used to identify grave markers despite their physical condition, allowing family members to more easily find loved ones through the map. The DISC team spurred this outreach to the wider community and fostered cooperation between Hamilton College and the surrounding area, increasing access to digital resources and strengthening community bonds to the Utica’s history. 

Deliverables: Digital Map

Date: 2023 - 2024