.jpg)
Photo Credit Stan Arnold Find A Grave.
PDF compiled by Alden Mitchell Eagle Scout Project Troop 77, Hopkinton, NH August 2013
Old Hopkinton Cemetery Mapping Project
Project Overview
My project was to map out the oldest sections of the Old Hopkinton Cemetery in Hopkinton,
NH. The problem was that with 1,250 people buried in these sections, and the earliest
headstone dated 1777, there was no easy and accurate way of finding anyone in the cemetery.
If a visitor was looking for an ancestor, they could only be given a general idea of where in the
cemetery their ancestor might be. Each headstone in the area would have to be examined, and
the visitor would have to hope the headstone they were looking for was not unreadable,
broken, or missing. As a result of this project, visitors to the cemetery will now be able to
easily find headstones using maps that I created. In addition, copies of my entire project have
been given to the Hopkinton Cemetery Trustees and the Hopkinton Historical Society.
I started the project by photographing each headstone and assigning each of them a location
based on row and section of the cemetery. I then matched the photographs with burial
records maintained by the Hopkinton Cemetery Trustees and inscriptions (if applicable) from
“Gravestone Inscriptions Of All Cemeteries Within The Township of Hopkinton, New
Hampshire,” compiled by Priscilla Hammond for the Rumford Chapter of the Daughters of the
American Revolution in 1932. Along the way I made various corrections (spelling, dates,
section of the cemetery, etc.) to the burial records. I then created a database which includes
name, date of birth, date of death, section, row, position, inscription, and a photograph of the
headstone. For burials that have taken place since 1932, I entered the inscriptions into the
database. I also created a map of each section to show the relative location of each headstone.
I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this project: my family for encouraging and
supporting me throughout the project, the Boy Scouts from Troop 77 for their help measuring
distances and verifying data on several hot summer days, my Troop 77 Leaders for providing
expert guidance and keeping me focused, and the Hopkinton Cemetery Trustees for supplying
the data to get started on the project, and the enthusiasm to complete it.
Alden Mitchell
August 2013
Comments