By Matthew Sotlar / The Jambar
Youngstown State University Professor Amy Fluker will be partnering with the Trumbull County Historical Society to collaborate on the digitization of cemetery records in Warren’s Oakwood Cemetery.
Fluker, an associate professor of history, said the collaboration came as the TCHS was granted almost $75,000 in research funds Oct. 6.
“It’s a nearly $75,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. It’s a federal grant designed to support small historical societies and museums,” Fluker said.
Oakwood Cemetery, which first opened in 1848, is the final resting place of over 30,000 individuals spaced out over 35 acres. Fluker said the cemetery reached out in hopes of providing digital information for the families of the interred.
“Oakwood came to us,” Fluker said. “They have tens of thousands of burials, and it’s still a working cemetery. People come to them all the time with requests for information about where their loved ones are buried, and they simply do not have the staff to do that kind of research for people.”
The project, which began in 2022, will ultimately digitize nearly 40,000 records. Fluker said the data will be available in a searchable database once the project is completed.
“We’ve almost completed the process of scanning what will ultimately be close to 40,000 individual records,” Fluker said. “We scan them, then students in my history of Ohio class, over the last three or so years, have taken those scans and transcribed them into a database.”
Along with the class, YSU’s History Club has also taken part in the digitization efforts.
Cataloging each individual burial comes as a challenge. While the cemetery opened in 1848, Fluker said a number of internments from earlier times were moved to Oakwood upon its opening.
“The first burials are from the 1840s, but the kind of weird thing is that there was an older cemetery in Warren before that,” Fluker said. “Some of the rich and famous people had their loved ones moved from the older cemetery to Oakwood, so there’s people who died and are buried in Oakwood from before the cemetery even opened.”
Fluker said the digitization project will help provide valuable information about the deceased individuals for their families and loved ones.
“What we’ve got from these burial records are not only the name of the person, their date of birth and their date of death … we have their home address, their parents’ names — we have the cause of death and the funeral home,” Fluker said “We [also] have whether they were married and what race or ethnicity they were. There’s just a whole lot more layers to this person’s story that we can get from the records versus what you would just see on their headstone.”
TCHS is also working to digitize a number of cemeteries in the Warren area, including Pioneer Cemetery. Fluker said students interested in joining the digitization project can reach out to her directly or contact the TCHS.
“[TCHS] are always looking for volunteers, so any students, if you’re in the [Sokolov] Honors College and you need volunteer hours or you need volunteer hours for your Greek organizations or clubs that you may be in, we can help you find some hours.”
Students interested in joining YSU’s History Club can email Fluker directly. The Oakwood digitization project is set to be completed by 2027.
