
“I had been looking for him for eleven years. He was there the whole time — just no one had written it down.”
Clara Ostrowski's great-uncle James died at Cold Harbor in 1864. His name appeared in a pension record but nowhere on the ground. When a Resting volunteer mapped the unmarked section of Elmwood Cemetery in Roanoke last spring, a GPS pin appeared beside a stone so weathered it read only a partial surname and the year. Clara drove six hours. She brought flowers she'd pressed from her mother's garden. She knelt in the grass for a long time before she said anything at all.
Clara Ostrowski
Genealogy researcher, Roanoke, VA
3,200
Graves mapped and searchable

“We had 11,000 records in cardboard boxes in a church basement. One summer. That's all it took.”
Duane Harrelson has been president of the Mount Carmel Cemetery Association in rural Arkansas for nineteen years. When he started, the records were handwritten ledgers dating to 1887 — some in ink so faded the names had become shapes. Resting sent a team of eight volunteers for three consecutive Saturdays in July. They photographed every page, transcribed every name, and cross-referenced against state death certificates. Mount Carmel's records are now searchable online. Duane keeps one of the original ledgers on his desk. He says it's lighter now, somehow.
Duane Harrelson
President, Mount Carmel Cemetery Association, AR
47
Cemeteries preserved from loss

“I used to hand families a photocopied map and watch them wander. Now I hand them a QR code and they walk straight there.”
Renata Vásquez has directed funerals at Sycamore Hill Memorial Park in San Antonio for fourteen years. The cemetery's paper records were organized by plot number — useful if you knew the plot, useless if you only knew the name. After Resting mapped all 6,400 graves last autumn, Renata prints a QR code on the service program. Families scan it at the graveside and see exactly where their loved one rests — and every other family member buried nearby, going back four generations. She says two families have discovered relatives they didn't know were buried in the same cemetery.
Renata Vásquez
Funeral Director, Sycamore Hill Memorial Park, San Antonio, TX
189
Families reconnected with their dead
Every gift rescues a story
Preserve a Name
You are not giving to an organization. You are pulling a specific human story back from the edge of disappearing.
Come walk the rows with us
Join a Mapping Day
No experience required — only patience, a steady hand, and the willingness to kneel in the grass and read what the stone says. We supply the rest.
