Field Activity #3: Creation of a GIS for Hadleyville Cemetery

Introduction

Deputy Clerk / Treasurer Dale Welke and Clerk / Treasurer Jennifer Meyer of the Town of Pleasant Valley contacted the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire Geography Department in the summer of 2016 to request assistance with mapping the headstones at the Hadleyville Cemetery.  Records about the cemetery were lacking, and the town desired to have a map made that would indicate the burial plots, the condition of the markers, and as much information about the individuals as possible. This responsibility was relegated to the students of the Geographic Field Methods course, UWEC Geog336.  

Figure 1 The Hadleyville Cemetery is located on County Road HH (Section 04, Twn 25N Range 9W). It is 1.5 acres and 120 lots.

Hadleyville was an unincorporated community in Eau Claire County in west-central Wisconsin, located in the Town of Pleasant Valley. The community faded away shortly after the Great Depression of the 1930s, leaving behind only this cemetery, which was once across the road from the town’s General Store¹.  The cemetery is now surrounded by farmland now owned by a dairy farm². Nearby towns include Cleghorn to the east, Eleva to the south, and Eau Claire to the north. 

This project encompassed many data collection challenges. Many of the headstones date back to the 1800’s and several of them are in bad disrepair; either eroded or broken. One of the concerns about the cemetery was that the messages on the stones would be lost as the stones weather. Also, the cemetery is not laid out in clear rows and not all of the stones are clearly visible from aerial photos.

Figure 2 Some examples of headstones in Hadleyville Cemetery and the complications associated with them.  

GIS Solutions

Using GIS tools, an interactive map of the Hadleyville Cemetery was created that addresses all of these data collection problems. The final GIS product contains locations of all known burial plots (those denoted by headstones), photos of each headstone and monument, and whatever information about the individuals was available. The photos and information are linked as attributes of the grave. This GIS provides a digital copy of the inscriptions on the stones that cannot be erased by erosion and can be accessed from anywhere.  This is the best and easiest method to convey clear and accurate information to the public and the Town of Pleasant Valley, and the applications and functions of this product extend far beyond that of a simple map. 

Objectives

·         Use the UAVs to record aerial imagery of the Hadleyville Cemetery.

·         Gather photos of each feature.

·         Record whether it is a headstone for a grave or a monument with no grave associated.

·         Record information about each headstone as availability dictates: First name, last name, middle initial, marker type (marble, limestone, or granite), year of birth, year of death, legible (yes or no), and whether the marker is standing (yes or no). 

Equipment used:

Three drones, property of the UW Eau Claire Department of Geography, were flown over the cemetery with 95% overlap to provide base imagery.

·         *Inspire UAV

·         Rededge UAV

·         Phantom UAV

·         *Dual frequency survey grade GPS by Topcon

·         Photos of the headstones and monuments were taken on site by students using phones or Nikon digital cameras

·         ESRI ArcMap 10.4.1.

*Data from the Inspire UAV and the Garmin GPS was rendered unusable and was not included in the final project.

Collection Details

The data was collected between September 14^th, 2016 and September 21^st, 2016. The temperature on collection days averaged 60℉ with clear skies and low wind.

Methods

Data was collected by flying the Phantom and RedLine UAVs over the area of interest. Field notes were recorded manually in notebooks so that inscriptions from stones that were illegible in photos could be deciphered and recorded. Digital photos were collected. Ideally, the survey grade GPS was to be used to collect location data for each feature, but the GPS malfunctioned. The class split up and took notes on different areas of the cemetery, though there was ambiguity as to which stones were in which row.

All of the notes and photos were later compiled into a google spreadsheet and standardized by the class. A system was drawn up retroactively to designate each feature with a unique alphanumeric “PointID” (see Figure 4). This was used in the master spreadsheet to ensure that groups that had recorded info on the same features would not enter that feature twice. An aerial map was used to ensure that the class was not missing data on any features. 

Figure 4 This image was used by the class to assign each feature with an individual alphanumeric code. This code was entered into the “PointID” field of the spreadsheet. 

The photos and drone imagery were uploaded and shared in the class folder on the University’s geography server. The class decided, through discussion, which attributes were to be recorded and how they were to be standardized in the master spreadsheet (see Figure 5a). Every individual entered the attributes for the headstones they had recorded. Problems were encountered when it became apparent that not every headstone visible on the UAV imagery had had attributes recorded, so a second trip was made to the Hadleyville Cemetery by certain benevolent class members to collect the missing data. It became necessary for each student to download the spreadsheet and further edit it to a higher level of organization and accuracy (see Figure5b).

Figure 5a The master spreadsheet was created using google docs so that everyone would have access to it. Having numerous editors making changes simultaneously made for a chaotic time, however, and mistakes were made. 5b These mistakes were remedied to the best of my ability in my own copy of the spreadsheet, which I downloaded and modified further. 

The UAS (drone) imagery was downloaded into ArcMap 10.4.1. Each headstone was digitized as a point feature and saved to a “Graves” feature class. The Point ID was entered as an attribute for each headstone. Photos of the headstones were added into the attribute table as raster fields. ArcMap encountered problems with the process of downloading the photos (see Figure 6) and the final GIS was modified to only include photos that downloaded successfully. A table join was enacted, using the Point ID field, to join the personal modified excel copy of the master spreadsheet to the attribute table of the Graves feature class. 

Figure 6 The error message above was displayed each time a photo was added to the Graves feature class. 

A separate feature class, “Monuments”, was made for the monuments which designated family plots. These were typically large stone markers that had a surname and/or numerous first names inscribed on it but was not being used to mark a specific burial plot. One exception, however, can be seen in the case of N13 which served as the Beardsley family monument (containing details about many family members) and also as the headstone for Clifford Beardsley’s grave. This feature was included in both the Grave and Monument feature classes. 
A third feature class was created to denote the location of the ground control points. 

Results and Discussion

The final GIS map (see Figure 7 for a staionary version supplemented  with locator maps) includes three feature classes; Graves, Monuments, and GCPs. The monument features contain photos that will appear when the user clicks on the monument icon. The interactive version of the final product is available as an ArcMap file. The full attribute table is available here. 

Figure 7 This is a snapshot of the interactive GIS product. Each grave feature includes attribute information about the individual buried  there. The monument features contain photos that will open when clicked on. 

Accuracy would have been increased had a plan for data organization been in place before the data collection began. Possible sources of error include the unstandardized methods of recording attributes on the headstones as a class. Since there was no conferring ahead of time, the data each group recorded was different and each group came up with a separate method for naming the rows and columns to identify the headstone locations. The setup of the cemetery provided a challenge: the headstones were not laid out in a grid or in continuous rows. Initially, multiple headstones were missed and attributes and photos had to be collected later. This would not have been necessary had the collection method been more organized. Also, error and ambiguity about where each stone was located would have been mitigated had the survey-grade GPS worked during data collection.  

Conclusion

Overall, this survey was an excellent learning experience. The class needed to work together to organize data collection with little guidance and few directions beforehand, standardize the disorganized data that was collected in the field, and work together to remedy mistakes. Creativity was required to devise solutions and many lessons were learned.

Unfortunately, the lack of planning and numerous equipment failures also resulted in a mediocre product. The level of accuracy of the data that was collected is questionable, and the amount of attributes that were pushed into categories retroactively means a high probability of mistakes. The photo points intended to go with every grave feature did not work, and the final interactive map is not upload-able to this blog. Still, this GIS product does provide the user with more information about the Hadleyville Cemetery than was previously available, and the attributes it provides are a good place for the township to begin when they make a more thorough record in the future. 

Sources

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleyville,_Wisconsin

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleyville,_Wisconsin