Virtual Tour of Prospect Hill Cemetery Brings Great Voices to Life

Looking for something to do this month? If you’ve got some time on your hands, you might want to head online to YouTube to check out a virtual tour of Prospect Hill Cemetery, located at the corner of Auburn Road and Ridge Street, in Millis. Eagle Scout Parker Nathans, along with the help of members of his fellow members of Boy Scout Troop 15, researched and created the tour, for which he received his Eagle Scout medal in late spring. Whether you want to complete the tour on foot, accessing it via your Smart phone, or from the comfort of your armchair via your computer (or Smart TV), simply hop onto YouTube and search for Millis Cemetery Tour.
“The beauty of this project is you can watch it however you want. One of the reasons I wanted to do this tour, was when I was researching Eagle Scout projects, I found that for a small town outside of Boston we have a lot of famous people buried there. We have the Governor of Massachusetts from awhile back, Emerson who founded Emerson college, a lot of notable people, famous, important people that went in there,” says Nathans. The Millis Historical Society members he met with, he says, “handed me this old, dusty, big book created in the 50s about when the cemetery was being created that had these markers that featured famous people.”
The 18-acre Prospect Hill Cemetery was established in 1714, when Millis was known as East Medway. It’s been in use for 300 years, with two distinct sections – one laid out in the 18th and 19th centuries and a more recent part laid out in the 1930s. It contains approximately 2,850 graves (an estimation, since some no longer bear their markers).
Parker involved the other scouts in the project not only by having them film some of the tour, but also by having them voice act the parts of the famous figures buried in the cemetery. The voices of such men as Charles Roberts, born in Newton in 1882, who received a Medal of Honor by President Taft, are impersonated by young men in Millis Troop 15.
“It was part research, but it was part voice-acting, too,” says Nathans. “I wanted (other scouts) to get really involved, so I had them voice the people that were in the cemetery. The whole project took about eight months.”
Nathans says that surprisingly, the voice-acting was an arduous task, taking much time and many takes to complete.
Nathans, a recent high school graduate who will head to LaSalle College in Newton in the fall and who has begun a custom flag-making online business called Feisty Flags, cannot say enough about his experience as a Boy Scout.
“If there are any parents out there, any Dads with children that they’re looking for an activity, I would recommend getting involved in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. Look around your community and just get involved in the whole program, because it’s really good,” he says. “The more you get involved and the more you camp, the more you like it, and it goes from this whole thing of learning new skills (to being) with friends and with community, so that it builds this relationship.”