A new computer program for Cedar Hill Cemetery will allow city officials to keep better records and provide family members access to research and locate relatives’ graves in the cemetery.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Friday approved a $99,955 agreement with webCemeteries Software to install the program, which will improve and upgrade the present cemetery computer program. City Clerk Walter Osborne called the present software obsolete.

“This will fully automate the cemetery process for purchase and interment but it will also be user-friendly for families that want to do genealogy research,” he said, adding the software has a built-in GPS system that will allow people to download an app and locate relative’s plot in the cemetery.

The system will also help officials with the purchase of gravesites and help maintain a record of cemetery burials going back to 1967. He said representatives from webCemeteries will come to Vicksburg to download the city’s records into the company’s system and create the software for the city.

“Also, family members will be able, if they so choose, to upload pictures of their loved ones once it’s approved by city personnel,” Osborne said.

“This is a long time coming,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.

Osborne said after the board meeting that a fire at the cemetery in the late 1960s destroyed much of the cemetery’s records “so we have clean records back to 1967. Once those get uploaded they (webCemeteries representatives) will look at recreating the data from further back.”

He said the software has another feature that will allow special interest groups, like the Sisters of Mercy or the Knights of Columbus, to go online and locate the graves of members in the cemetery.