Barre City approves COSI Fund grant to digitize 19th‑century cemetery records

Council on Dec. 16 approved a COSI Fund allocation to underwrite a citywide cemetery-records digitization project aimed at consolidating scattered 19th‑ and 20th‑century documents into a searchable database. The manager said the work will support genealogy, improve plot-ownership clarity and help long-term cemetery management.

Scott, the project lead, told the council the Vermont Granite Museum will manage scanning and transcription. “There’s roughly 17,600 burials within the three cemeteries,” he said, and the team plans to extract about 30 data fields per burial into a single-line spreadsheet for each interment. The plan calls for two full‑time staff, 8–10 part‑time workers and volunteers to complete historical records by May 1, 2026, with SemSite providing an interactive map layer so residents can search by name or plot.

Council members asked how originals and digital files will be stored. Scott said original records will be inventoried, placed in archival boxes, and returned to the cemetery office; searchable spreadsheets and high-resolution scans will be held on hard drives with copies for the clerk and cemetery office. The manager noted the city already holds deed records and that digitized files are intended to improve access and reduce errors in day‑to‑day cemetery management.

The motion to allocate the COSI Fund amount for the project passed by voice vote. Staff said they would proceed with contracting and begin uploads and verification steps early in January, and that the city will accept public corrections once the searchable database is published.