Toccoa Cemetery Mapping Project Complete

The city of Toccoa has new, computerized maps of its city cemetery.

Monday, Toccoa City Clerk Fredda Wheeler made the announcement that her and staff from the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission had completed the re-mapping project of the Toccoa City Cemetery.

“I am here to announce today proudly and boldly that the project is complete,” said Wheeler. “The software that will manage the data has been loaded on my computer. We have brand new maps of the complete cemetery.”

The project took the years of records for the city cemetery and put them all into a computer. It then coordinated those records with locations on the cemetery map and pictures of each grave site at the cemetery to create a new, computerized mapping system that can take the records and pull up exactly where that gravesite is in the cemetery with a picture of the site.

Faith Bryan with the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission helped to work on the project.

She said the project has won an Innovation Award from the National Association of Development Organizations.

“Each year, only 60 projects nationwide are chosen to receive this award,” said Bryan. “This project was put under the Technology and Data Section of the awards.”

Toccoa Mayor Jeanette Jamieson said that Wheeler deserves all the credit for the project, handling what was an overwhelming responsibility from start to finish.

“I think it goes without saying that we need to add much appreciation to Fredda for the work she has done on this project,” said Jamieson. “At times, it was overwhelming, it was controversial, but she handled it diplomatically throughout, like I said, from start to finish.”

Toccoa City Commissioner Gail Fry echoed those thoughts, adding that the records four years ago for the cemetery were difficult to understand and not organized in a way that accurate information could be found easily.

Meanwhile, one resident again expressed concern over the cemetery.

At Monday’s meeting, resident David Neal again brought up a concern that people had been buried on top of already existing graves over the years.