Brandon Twp.-James Whitton earned his Eagle Scout award with some help from the dead.
Sort of.
The Brandon High School senior spent nearly a year surveying four area cemeteries, Bald Eagle Lake, Carmer, Eaton and Shurter. The idea for the project was to create a list of every grave and person buried in those older township cemeteries. Over the years, many of the gravestones deteriorated and have succumbed to vandalism, said Whitton.
‘Many of the stones were very hard to read, some were missing altogether, said Whitton, who started his 11-year trek to the Eagle Scout rank as a first-grade student at Belle Ann Elementary. ‘Weeds had overgrown some of the gravestones, and subdivisions have been built right next door to the cemeteries.?
Whitton obtained a list of the graves from the Brandon Township Library, which outlined the individuals buried in the cemeteries.
‘About 170 people were included in the cemeteries,? said Whitton. ‘The age of the graves ranged from about 1790 to some in the 1900s.?
Township Clerk Jeannie McCreery, who suggested the cemetery project to Whitton, said a continued interest in genealogy from many individuals prompted the survey.
‘Residents were coming into the township asking to find an individual buried in one of these township cemeteries,? said McCreery. ‘We were getting a lot of calls about genealogy. At some point we believe those cemetery records may have been destroyed. Thanks to James, we can now just make a copy and give it to the individual.?
McCreery added that a sealed container out at the cemetery to keep the map on-site may be the next project for another Eagle Scout candidate.