I felt compelled to point out something. I bought my GPS device with
the intent of getting a location for each and every individual grave.
The girl told me my device was accurate down to FOUR centimeters.
(For us none-metric users, four centimeters is about 1.5748 inches.
Not much at all.) So, I made a reading at each and every grave of my
ancestors at this cemetery.
After importing it to the computer, I showed a friend where it was,
expecting to see a nicely drawn out map. The dots were scattered and
unordered. Then I asked someone else and they said *most* GPS devices
(for hiking) where within 15 feet. Some of these people were buried
inches apart to maximize capacity. Assuming each casket is 45 inches
wide, you can have easily have four people in a standard 15 foot
width section of ground. Not too terribly accurate. (Oh, you can get
more accurate devices, the more you spend, the more accurate.)
So I changed my policy. Now if a person is buried in Section G,
Subsection S, Row 9, I look for the marker in the ground. I get the
latitude and longitude of that section marker instead of each and
every individual grave, I just get the location of the marker for
G-S-9. Then, I know I am within a few graves of that point. I use
"G-S-9" as the grave's address. Something like:
Maplewood Cemetery
G-S-9 Island of the Infants
123 Hilldale Road
Miami, Florida, 12345
What if the cemetery is small and does not have markers? Then I pick
a point (such as a church, or biggest marker in the cemetery-
anything I think is fairly permanent), and make my own map with
markers. After I did a few, I was able to keep them consistent and
fairly easy to do! It is interesting and to add this to Legacy so a
future genealogist can trek to the same spot and see how / why you
arrived at the conclusions you did.
Thanks.
Robert
At 2008-07-21 09:07 AM, you wrote:
I hope this is not off-topic, but I would like to start using the
Geo-Code Feature (GPS) in Legacy more. Does anyone know if the GPS
systems available on cell phones are capable of calculating GPS
coordinates or if it's just the directional type GPS that cars etc.
have? If it is possible with cell phones, what do I look for?
Thanks,
Melanie
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