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WARREN -- The Trumbull County Historical Society, in partnership with Youngstown State University's Center for Applied GIS, has launched an interactive ArcGIS StoryMap for Pioneer Cemetery.
The digital tool allows visitors and researchers to locate individual headstones within a couple of feet of their physical markers, providing unprecedented access to the historic burial ground.
The project, more than a year in the making, transforms decades of historical records and recent fieldwork into an accessible public resource. Pioneer Cemetery, believed to be the oldest in the Western Reserve, holds the remains of many of the area's earliest settlers, with the first recorded burial in 1804.
The cemetery is located behind Warren City Hall off Mahoning Avenue NW.
The StoryMap project builds on years of preservation work. In 2023, TCHS received an Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board grant to digitize cemetery records from a 2003 survey. Those digitized records became the foundation for the GIS mapping initiative.
The fieldwork team -- Pioneer intern India Gatts, TCHS staff Savannah Moss and Kate Pfouts, and Martha Ellers intern Helena -- spent hundreds of hours at the cemetery carefully plotting GPS coordinates for every visible headstone, working through challenges posed by weathered and shifted markers.
John Bralich, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at YSU, guided the technical development of the StoryMap. The Center provides GIS mapping services to government, nonprofit and social service organizations throughout the region. The StoryMap integrates interactive headstone locator tools, historical biographical records, satellite imagery overlay and mobile optimization for on-site use.
With the StoryMap complete, the Trumbull County Historical Society’s next goal is to raise funds for a community headstone cleaning day that will allow volunteers to safely clean and preserve the cemetery’s historic markers. Information on how to get involved or support the project is available on the TCHS website.