Cemetery Headstone Transcription & Scanning

If you’ve ever walked through an older cemetery, chances are you’ve seen eroded headstones. Perhaps you’ve even squinted to figure out the names and dates. Losing the information on these older burials is something plaguing cemeteries across the United States, leaving cemetery associations with inaccurate or incomplete records not knowing which plots are taken and by whom.

Digitizing headstones is the solution — and it can save private cemeteries money by figuring out a plan for future plot sales while ensuring the sanctity of family remains.

Most of the gravestones over the past few centuries were made with marble, slate or granite, or whatever the locally sourced rock was. In several areas in the Midwest, this includes limestone. It turns out marble and limestone are not great at withstanding weathering because they include calcite. Calcite is especially prone to chemical weathering, such as acid rain from factory pollution.

This is why old headstones from the 1800s and earlier are often barely legible, and need to be preserved digitally before they are lost forever.

WOOD Inspection Services can help preserve all the headstones in your cemetery with headstone scanning. We photograph the headstones in your cemetery before they deteriorate, then transcribe and inventory every plot. Headstone information can be easily uploaded into a cemetery mapping system or online service such as Find a Grave or Billion Graves.

Headstone transcription coupled with our ground-penetrating radar (GPR) services will give your cemetery the advantage of knowing exactly which plots are taken, which can be sold, and how to direct your visitors on finding the exact headstone they are looking for.