Arjun Jain, a sophomore at Ludlowe High School in Fairfield, Connecticut and an Eagle Scout with Troop 199 of Fairfield, worked closely during the summer of 2010 with Fairfield Museum and History Center Genealogist, Roderick Mackenzie, to complete his Eagle honor project –immortalizing the Fairfield East Cemetery on the Old Post Road. To meet the necessary criteria, Jain combined his interests in computers and history, spending long hours to meticulously note grave inscriptions and create a working database.
The intense field work, supervised by MacKenzie, involved a team of volunteer family members, friends and scouts, noting grave inscriptions, checking over the work with meticulous care. Jain adapted an existing database to fit his parameters. “With this database anyone can search for a family member’s gravestone and be pointed to the location of the correct headstone,” Jain said.
“The overall project doesn’t stop with this single database. The Fairfield Museum and History Center is planning to obtain similarly created databases of other historical cemeteries and combine them to make one publicly accessible database of Fairfield and the surrounding areas. We have one of the most extensive databases for genealogy in the state.”
The intense field work, supervised by MacKenzie, involved a team of volunteer family members, friends and scouts, noting grave inscriptions, checking over the work with meticulous care. Jain adapted an existing database to fit his parameters. “With this database anyone can search for a family member’s gravestone and be pointed to the location of the correct headstone,” Jain said.
“The overall project doesn’t stop with this single database. The Fairfield Museum and History Center is planning to obtain similarly created databases of other historical cemeteries and combine them to make one publicly accessible database of Fairfield and the surrounding areas. We have one of the most extensive databases for genealogy in the state.”
Jain successfully passed his Eagle Scout board of review this summer.
You can read more in the Shoreline Plus web site at http://tinyurl.com/25jtj7d
