My report as self-appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Rutherford Cemetery – Jim Masterman
Jan 2024
When I was a kid in the early 1960’s we always looked forward to the spring cleanup at the cemetery. All the local farm families would be there, and the women brought A LOT of food. We lived about one half mile away so we could just walk down there, past my grandfather’s farm (now Axdahl’s Garden Farm). As kids, we did not have to do much actual work, but we did paint the fence once. That was where I learned that getting silver paint all over your hands and face is a bad idea. When I was 12, I got my first paying job, cutting the grass at the cemetery. It paid $2 per hour, and it was the highest paying job I had for years.
Years later, my sister, Leslie Dorendorf, was on the board of directors and had been trying to convince me to join as well. I had put it off for several years in part because for several years in a row, I was in some 3M plant in Asia during the cemetery annual meeting. Finally, around 2017, I agreed. One day as I walked across the cemetery, I noticed a place in the grass that was clearly a burial from the previous year. But there was no headstone and about 15 feet away was a headstone with no sign of a grave. I did not know what happened here, but I decided I should look into it.
Records and Lot Location Maps
Once I began to look at how records and lot locations were managed, I was shocked. The first
problem was that there were two methods in use. This is a problem just because the two will always differ. The first method was to write names on the cemetery map. The map is not quite large enough for this and the tiny handwritten notes were not always legible. Does a name written on a lot location mean that someone is buried there, or just that the lot has been purchased? Of course, a single gust of wind would take the entire thing away.
The second method was a cemetery management program from a company called Pontem. I am a mechanical and electrical engineer; I have written a lot of soware and used many computer programs, and this was the worst program I have ever seen. It is a trivial database application to save names & locations, but there was no user feedback. When the user finished entering data for a lot sale & hit “Enter” the screen just went blank without confirmation of any kind. To get information out of the program, the user would “run a query’ which would produce a listing of all the data. No help in locating a particular transaction or person, the user had to look through the entire listing. The program had no associated map nor any concept of a valid lot location. You could sell lots that did not actually exist or sell the same lot many times. Excel is an excellent engineering tool and I have a lot of experience programming VBA in Excel and I knew I could do much better.
Over the next year or two, I developed an Excel program to intelligently manage records and link them to maps. (If someone purchases lot 17 K South, where is it?). The key records page looks much like a conventional spreadsheet listing names and lot locations, but with some fundamental modifications...
- 1) The records page is protected, meaning that it cannot be edited directly. The first reason for this is to prevent inadvertent changes. I have done it many times, just accidentally bump the keyboard & I can see something change on the screen, but I don’t know what. The second reason is to validate data, invalid lot locations cannot be saved, etc.
- 2) The records page has many techniques to aid searches. It can be sorted by burial date, burial name, contact name, sale date, etc. Need to find the lot location for Albion Masterman? Just search for “Albion” (one entry) or “Masterman” (many entries).
- 3) The associated map showing all lot locations in the cemetery is created from the records data. Any new data or edits to existing data is instantly reflected on the map. This ensures that maps are always up to date.
- 4) Any record is directly linked to the associated map. Need to find where James Rutherford is buried? Just search for “Rutherford”, then click on the “Map It” button and the display switches to the map page with the lot highlighted.
It is not necessarily obvious, but Excel can be used to create a map showing lot locations. The cemetery is basically a large grid of 4’ x 10’ burial lots, and Excel is nothing if not a grid of cells. The cell size can be edited to be square where each square conceptually represents an area of 6” X 6” which can then be combined to represent a burial lot. All the lots are then combined to represent the enre cemetery on a single Excel sheet. The maps can then be printed on a large format printer (24’ x 36”) that makes for easy reference out at the cemetery.
Individual lots were never marked. Intervals of 4 lots x 6 lots (or similar) were marked with concrete or steel secon markers, but when it comes me for a burial, someone must measure between these secon markers and interpolate to mark the individual lot. It is error prone at best and difficult in the winter. I have done the interpolation in advance and placed 12” landscaping spikes with labelled tags at all 4 corners of individual lots. This makes it much easier to locate lots (especially in winter) with a metal detector. A metal detector is used to locate the spike and the tag may then be read to identify the correct lot.
Financial Records & Reports
The first financial report I heard at the annual meeting was “We have X dollars in this account
and Y dollars in that account which is more than we had last year, I think”. I was a little shocked, finances should be the single most important topic for the board of directors so I decided I should look into it. Previous reports contained a little more information but were poorly organized and impossible to compare the current year to the previous. Again, I decided this was a job for Excel VBA.
The financial report...
- Our finances are quite simple, and the report reflects that, one page for “big picture” financial status and one page for summarized income & expense.
- Businesses use a financial report format that makes direct comparisons between the current year and the previous, and ours is similar. Since our finances are so simple, we can compare them for up to 5 years. This makes it easy to spot trends in sales, expenses, income, etc.
- It should take the treasurer no more than one half hour to prepare the report.
- Each new report is automatically created and includes the data from the previous four years.
- 5) Each new report is an independent Excel file.
Tax Exempt-Status
One day I was talking to my tax adviser, and she mentioned that the cemetery should be filing an IRS form “ 990-N” as well as a similar for the Mn Attorney General’s Office. I had never heard of this, but I suspected that we were not doing it, so I decided to look into it. I called the Mn Attorney General’s Office, and the person was helpful, but for security purposes she wanted the proper name of the cemetery as well as the address. I could not be sure of the name, because historically we have used “Rutherford Cemetery”, “Rutherford Cemetery Association” and “Rutherford Cemetery and Columbarium Association” and I did not know what version she would have. Then she asked for the address which I could not provide because we did not seem to have a proper address. A vague description of where it is was not good enough. All she would say is that I needed to check an IRS document listing organizations that had lost tax exempt status for failure to file annual reports. After some searching of the IRS web site, I found a “bar delimited ascii database file” containing the list. I downloaded the (very large) file, searched it and sure enough Rutherford Cemetery was there with an address somewhere in Hugo which apparently was the home address of a previous treasurer. We had been de-listed for about five years. We established a proper address (7601 Manning Ave, N) and since both IRS and Mn
Attorney’s Office require USPS communication, we set up a PO box address for the cemetery.
After much more searching of the IRS web site, I found one of four possible forms to file to recover our tax-exempt status. I filled it out, submitted it and after only six months we recovered our status. The Mn Attorney’s Office was similar.
One other outcome from this is that we made a check list of all recurring annual payments or requirements (tax forms, insurance payments, P.O. box fees, etc.) which is now a permanent item on the agenda of board meetings.
GPR Survey
Rutherford Cemetery was originally formed in 1850 for baby William John Ramsden. (In fact, 15 of the first 18 burials were babies or children under the age of 11.) It was set on the south side of a hill which was too steep to farm anyway. About 16 of the local sellers/farmers each had a family plot of about 16’ by 70’ and for the first 100 years all management was led to the families. No one felt the need to record the precise location of a burial within this family plot. Each family lot typically had one large monument with four names and the burials are assumed to be somewhere nearby. Sometimes they had “foot stones” with just initials and sometimes not. Of course, there was no requirement that a burial have any marker at all.
Additions to the cemetery in about 1950 and 2005 significantly enlarged the cemetery. Over the years with a succession of volunteers managing the burials, older generaons replaced by younger, quesons about the precise locaons became more of a problem. The earliest burials were easy because there was a lot of space. As the cemetery filled, it became a problem to locate new graves such that they did not interfere with older ones. This is a common problem for all old cemeteries.
Most of us have seen documentaries that show archaeologists searching for buried artifacts using “Ground Penetrating Radar”. It is pretty much the same radar used to track airplanes and speeding cars but turned upside down to point into the ground. It does not actually work very well, but it does work well enough to detect where ground has been disturbed, such as a cemetery burial.
I knew that there was an enre industry using GPR to locate buried ulies and I thought it should work in cemeteries as well, so I decided to look into it. It turns out that there are few small companies specializing in mapping cemeteries. I researched a little and selected one to map Rutherford. It is a little expensive for the cemetery to do this, so I decided to donate the cost. Twenty unmarked burials were located in the oldest part of the cemetery, fortunately, none in the newer parts. The resulting map is available on-line at RutherfordCemetery.org/Burials/Map.
Boulder Wall
In about 1960 Manning Avenue was widened and the right-of-way was pushed out near the cemetery. The steep bank at the front was created and covered with limestone. When I was a kid, it was part of my job cutting grass to trim weeds and grass growing between the stones with a golf-whip. Over the years dirt seled on the bank & covered the stones such that only grass and weeds were visible. A few years ago, we planted flowers on the bank which looked much better, but they still needed maintenance, weeding, etc. and the bank is VERY steep and difficult to maintain. I always liked the boulder walls in back & I decided that a terraced boulder will in front would look much better and be much easier to maintain. I looked around and selected a contractor to do the job, and since the cost would be too high for the cemetery, I donated the cost. I think the boulder wall came out looking very well and it is easy to see along Manning Ave.
Google Drive
Over the years a lot of paper documents have accumulated, some of which are still important, and some not. With a succession of volunteers managing the cemetery, managing documents became a bigger problem. Some people have these documents, and some have others. Nowadays, many documents do not even come on paper. We needed some way to manage them, so I set up a Google Drive accessible to all board members for all variety of documents with separate folders for each year, invoices, photos, etc.
Railings
A few years ago, I was looking to replace some railings at my cabin. I am a dedicated DIY person, so I decided to look into it. It turns out that you can buy all the fancy parts for a wrought iron railing on-line and combine it with common steel tubing to make some very nice decorative wrought iron railings. All you need is a welder and saw. I decided that the steps on the two boulder walls in back needed railings, so I made some. Also, I made a third for the steps near the flagpole to be installed in the spring. I think this one will look especially nice.
Etc.
I always enjoy walking around the cemetery to read names and dates. Some of the old family names I recognize, some were gone by my time and nearly all the old names are gone now. I always find the dates interesting, with a little arithmetic I can see how old the person was (many of them were not particularly old). It is always surprising to see how many babies and children are buried there. Just looking at the dates, I can guess what life was like for them. This person was young during the civil war, that one lived and died without ever seeing a light bulb or a car. Of course, my favorite is my grandmother’s generation: she was born into “A World Lit Only by Fire” i.e. candles and oil lamps. As a young woman she saw the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote, and the 18th which was prohibition (later repealed by the 21st amendment). She lived through two world wars, her brother in one and her son in the other. By the time she died she could have taken a 747 jet back to Sweden to visit cousins she never met.
JAM
Jan 2024