Digital map provides access to historic African-American cemetery online

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - A digital map will be providing online access to East End Cemetery, a historic African-American burial ground in Henrico.

Built by the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, Department of Geography and the Environment, and Spatial Analysis Lab, the map features drone-captured imagery and GPS data points collected by hundreds of students and volunteers organized by the Friends of East End.

The searchable digital map can be accessed on both phones and tablets.

“Since 2013, volunteers have worked to restore this historic 16-acre burial ground that had been nearly swallowed up by dense vegetation,” Kristine Grayson, Associate Professor of Biology said. “More than 3,200 grave markers have been uncovered and documented, but until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to locate specific graves at the cemetery.”

The East End Cemetery Collaboratory is a learning community composed of faculty and staff from the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University and members of the Friends of East End Cemetery.

The Collaboratory is also developing a comprehensive digital archive of the cemetery, which contains:

• Thousands of records for people interred at East End
• Gravestone analyses
• Photographs
• Newspaper articles
• Other documents

A beta release is expected by the end of June, with a full release by the start of the 2020–21 academic year.

To learn more about the new map and the work of the East End Collaboratory, click here.

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