An area historic preservation and West Virginia University community service initiative recently received an important financial award that will enhance its long-term success.

The Fairmont City Cemetery Restoration Project has earned a $5,000 grant from the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation. The funds will be used to purchase computer systems that will help project participants develop and use three-dimensional pictures and digital maps of the cemetery, which is located on Maple Avenue in Fairmont’s Bellview section.

Project partners include the WVU Extension Service, several WVU academic departments, 612 MAC (a local community center), Fairmont State College and the Fairmont Community Development Partnership.

The computer system will expand the project participants’ability to electronically search for buried grave markers, read weathered headstones to determine names and dates and provide a better overall record of the site’s history. The cemetery is the final resting place for some of Marion County’s most prominent original citizens from the early 1800s.

Project leaders will be working with Frances VanScoy, director of the WVU Virtual Environments Laboratory, to determine the best hardware and software systems to support the activities. Students from the Virtual Environments Laboratory will use the equipment to create digital maps of the cemetery. The initiative’s leaders will meet with faculty from the WVU Department of Geology and Geography about using Geographic Information Systems software to further electronically document the site.

The project, originally funded in 2000 by a service learning grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, uses WVU students to clean up the site and research the cemetery’s place in the region’s history. The site had fallen into disrepair and had nearly been forgotten by area residents.

The restoration effort has evolved into a community outreach effort. Groups, including the County Connection and FSC ’s Black Student Union, have made the cemetery’s cleanup a public service project.

An after-school program, directed by a WVU graduate student majoring in education, will use the project to teach neighborhood children in grades seven through 12 how to do research, write reports and use the initiative’s computer systems. Judy Abbott, associate professor in WVU s College of Human Resources and Education and a literacy studies specialist, is supervising the after-school program.

The project’s coordinators hope that through these community outreach efforts, more people will learn about the advanced technology being used to complete the research and how it works through real-world utilization.

Families, many of whom live out of state, are using the information gained from the project to research their genealogical backgrounds. The project’s success has been a source of neighborhood pride, and several residents have helped with the cemetery’s cleanup.