Preservation Maryland staff joined the Patapsco Heritage Greenway Heritage Area during their volunteer clean-up at Oella Cemetery in Catonsville in mid-November. Here’s what we learned and how we’re going to apply it to our Six-to-Fix work:
Lending a hand to our Heritage Area partner, Patapsco Heritage Greenway, Meagan Baco and Michelle Eshelmen, headed to Catonsville to take part in a volunteer clean-up and documentation day at the historic Oella Cemetery. The effort started with uncovering head- and foot-stones covered by vegetation, cleaning the stones to be able to read the inscriptions, and using the free app BillionGraves to photograph and transcribe the inscription. The app, like other apps including Find a Grave and Saving Graves, geocodes the photos and information to a collection from that cemetery that is then available to search by the public online.
This year, Preservation Maryland committed to assist the Coalition for the Protection of Maryland Burial Sites to address resource-specific threats to burial sites across the state. We’ll be hosting several volunteers days at cemeteries and encourage you to sign up to get event notification. So, if you are interested in historic sacred places, cemeteries, and volunteer days for all-ages, please sign up to be a Six-to-Fix volunteer.
