Albany Rural Cemetery is one of the earliest and most significant examples of the Rural Cemetery Movement in the United States. Consecrated in 1844, helped lead a shift in the American burial tradition away from crowded, city churchyards toward sprawling, park-like landscapes designed for both the dead and the living.
Now more than 135,000 individuals are laid to rest across 467 acres of Albany Rural Cemetery, but locating a particular gravesite has been difficult for families, genealogists, and historians.
ARC Explorer, a new website designed to help visitors locate gravesites, is now solving that problem. It allows users to search using a person’s first and last name to find their exact grave location.
Organizers of the effort have also been working to develop a free mobile phone application that takes advantage of your phone’s built-in GPS capabilities to identify your location within the Cemetery.
You can find the iPhone (Apple/iOS) version here, or use the version here on your Android device.
They’ve also provided detailed instructions to help you get started with ARC Explorer, whether you’re accessing it through the website or using the mobile app.
You can find the new web-based tools and the tutorials here.
The effort is a collaboration between University at Albany and Albany Rural Cemetery, and was funded by the Bender Family Foundation.
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