The City of Seward is now offering two new online cemetery maps through the cities website, that the community can contribute to.
When the Seward City cemetery became the main cemetery of Seward in the 1930’s, no accurate mapping or records had been maintained. In 1983, the book, Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula Death Records and Cemetery Inscriptions, by the group, Kenai Totem Tracers, was published. This book recorded the marked and unmarked graves of individuals buried in the multiple cemeteries located on the Kenai Peninsula, including those in Seward. In the early 2000’s, past Community Development Director, Kerry Martin, began heavily researching the individuals buried within the City cemetery and surrounding cemeteries, attempting to identify and locate known and unknown individuals. His research was added to the second book published by Kenai Totem Tracers, Cemetery Inscriptions and Area Memorials in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula Borough, in 2004*. In this book, there is a list of individuals whose burial locations are unknown.
The first map, available on the cities website, focuses on the burial locations of your loved ones and contains associated headstone pictures and/or obituaries. The map shows where individuals are laid to rest within the following cemeteries: City, Jesse Lee, American Legion, Pioneers, Masonic, and the old Oddfellows cemetery. Instructions on how to use this map are provided in this short tutorial video. Plot information includes headstone photos and associated obituaries.
The second map is for the public to add or edit any information that they may want to contribute. This map is for the public to add to or edit any information in the cemetery map. Attachments can be uploaded to individuals such as headstone photos or associated obituaries. All edits will be reviewed by the Community Development staff. Instructions on how to use this map are provided in this short tutorial video.
All edits will be reviewed by city staff members and then added to the first map. Instructional videos and written instructions on how to navigate both maps can be found on the same webpage as the maps under the Resources tab. The maps are also mobile-friendly as shown in the photo comments so you are able to view them on your cellphones.
There are around 400 individuals within the City Cemetery whose burial locations have not been identified, not including individuals buried in the private cemeteries nearby. The list was compiled onto a spreadsheet and can be found here. If you have information on any individuals on the list, please add a burial plot for the individual on the editable map or contact Community Development staff.
Since 2004, staff and volunteers have taken the time to keep improving the cemetery records by surveying and mapping out the cemeteries and by taking photos of burial sites that have headstones. In 2022, City Council approved Resolution 2022-076 which authorized ground penetrating radar (GPR) services to be conducted in the City cemetery. Both the west and east sides of the City cemetery and the section near the old Oddfellows cemetery were surveyed. The results can be seen on both maps above by clicking the Layer List icon in the mapping application and clicking on the layer, 2022 GPR survey results.
