I’d like to map out burial plots at a cemetery in detail. I would like to:
Map the extent of the plot area (verified from an official, publicly recorded cemetery map)
Mark the location of the headstone (if any)
Looking at the ways such things are mapped currently, it seems that whether a grave is mapped as an area or a node, they are tagged the same.
Group Plots
The relationship between plot and headstone is not always 1:1, as in the case of large family plots, where a single headstone is engraved with information relating to multiple individual burial sites.
The area information for each family member is known, and could be mapped as a closed way with cemetery=grave for the specific plots. But what about the family headstone? It’s not really a “grave” in the same way that the plots themselves are, but I don’t see a way to distinguish the two in how these things are currently tagged.
Headstone Attributes
I also thought it would be interesting to include information about the headstone itself, such as its material, color, height, etc. Having the headstone as its own node is ideal for this, and these attributes would not apply to the plot area, so a separate feature makes sense.
I know there’s grave=headstone, but the plot itself is left at the more generic cemetery=grave, which would completely overlap the headstones, tag-wise.
Can it be solved just with tagging?
Is there a better way to tag a burial plot? cemetery=burial_plot? But I know that there’s already an established practice of putting the name and other information onto cemetery=grave objects.
I would map individual plots only where they are visible on the ground, hence no need for copying anything from the cemetery map.
A caveat regarding the names on gravestones, I have read that some jurisdictions around the world are contemplating to extend privacy rights to dead people which would then possibly put the mapping of names on gravestones on the same level as the mapping of names on doorbells (likely meaning that we’d delete the names from OSM).
Thank you for that information! I hadn’t even considered the privacy aspect.
That in mind, I’ve seen graves in OSM mapped with name=John Doe, but then also with inscription=Here Lies The Body Of John Doe, etc etc.
If I wanted to include the text of the inscription, should I proactively omit the names from that? Do you think the other information like birth, death, etc would be acceptable if the name were omitted?
From a family history and ground truth point of view, I’d map and record the memorials and text as you find it.
In the UK, many memorials have been recorded by family history societies, but I’ve no idea on the mapping quality. Might be worth chatting to your local Illinois family history/genealogy group. Recording the text is challenging enough, wearher worn etc. Also some cemeteries have been partially cleared or covered to provide additional burial volume. Stones are often moved to the boundaries. Also some burials are inside churches, memorial text getting badly damaged by walking on them, or on separate plaques. Some headstones etc are true memorials of those buried or lost elsewhere. Others being mass graves of unknown sailors and passengers of wrecks. Quite a challenge to map in detail!
Others have been cleared for building development, some for new railways. I wonder if the railway mappers will allow historic cemetery mapping for Curzon Street Station, Birmingham?
I wonder if it is reasonable to represent a plot as a node with just the family name, dates along any other random text that appears on the associated plaque or headstone.
