South Jordan scout memorializes those buried in Fairfield Cemetery

FAIRFIELD, Utah County — When Cameron Carson visited the Fairfield Cemetery with his grandfather, he noticed the cemetery was filled with rocks instead of headstones.

Truth was the headstones, which were made of sandstone, had eroded away over time.

"I had known that my grandfather wanted to buy headstones for a lot of his ancestors that were buried there, but that soon became illogical because of the expense," Carson said.

Three years ago, the South Jordan resident took on the problem as his Eagle Scout project. He designed a monument for the cemetery, with a plaque displaying the 145 names, birth and death dates of those buried in the cemetery between 1855 and 1950.

Carson designed the monument based on a similar one at the Lehi Sugar Factory, and used AutoCAD architectural software to draw up the plans. Many of those buried in Fairfield Cemetery are Carson's relatives.

"There are about 47 Carsons on the plaque," he said. One of those, William H. Carson, was one of the founders of Fairfield.

Carson spent months checking the names and dates against both Fairfield's records and the individual headstones in the cemetery, finding three more people in the cemetery than on the records.

And while working with Novacolor, the company that made the plaque, Carson had to go through the entire proofreading process again.

"I always found two or three mistakes from them moving things around," he said.

One of Carson's struggles was finding financial support for the project. Novacolor provided a discount for the plaque, and Owell Precast discounted the monument itself.

"I made what seemed like about 1,000 phone calls," he said. "I talked to hundreds of companies in the Salt Lake Valley to find sponsorship. It was actually really hard to do that. When I was doing this it was right at the beginning of the recession."

Despite most businesses cutting back or eliminating their charitable donation programs, the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation donated $1,200 to the project. Kenneth Mays, a foundation trustee, provided a photograph for the monument.

Carson also found support in Fairfield's mayor, Lynn Gillies.