Overland Park ? Some people knit. Some people bowl.

Linda K. Lewis hangs out with the dead.

Lewis has spent five years exploring and documenting all of Johnson County’s cemeteries, from Antioch Pioneer Cemetery in Merriam — where many of the town’s settlers rest — to one tiny, forgotten burial ground on private property.

She and a handful of volunteers have documented 40 of 44 known cemeteries. They have photographed headstones and plots, section by section, row by row, stone by stone. Lewis posted all of it on the Web site cemetery.cottonhills.com.

Digital cemetery project

Those searching for a long-lost ancestor can type in a surname to see a photo of their headstone and a map of where they are buried. All thanks to Lewis’ diligent skulking around.

She has run the numbers, too, creating charts of Johnson County deaths from epidemics, wars and other disasters.

Her digital cemetery project, honored last year by the Association for Gravestone Studies, is nectar for genealogy geeks. She’s turning over her vast database to Johnson County’s public libraries.

Before Lewis, the most complete inventory of the county’s cemeteries was from the 1970s and was available only in 25-year-old print editions. “It’s not something that a lot of organizations would take on, just because of the time commitment and all of the barriers,” said Dave LaCrone, the library’s Web content developer who will oversee the project.

Where none had gone before

So why’d she do it? Because it hadn’t been done. Lewis, a laid-off software engineer and self-described Star Trek fan living in Overland Park, said the data she has harvested illustrate Kansas’ early transience. Many people died just passing through.

“People staking homestead claims but never making the improvements, and little communities that popped up but then couldn’t survive became ghost towns, and now all trace is about gone,” she said.

Lewis first fell in love with cemeteries back in her hometown of Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin is buried there, as are other early American celebrities and historical figures.

A passing interest became a vocation when she moved to Kansas 15 years ago and became active in several history-oriented groups, including the Prairie Rose chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Overland Park.

Her Web site is already popular with local genealogy buffs, said LaCrone, one reason the library was interested in partnering with her.

The library came through in September by securing a nearly $39,000 grant from the county’s Heritage Trust Fund that will pay the cost of moving the info from Lewis’ care to the library’s history Web site, jocohistory.org.

“The mission of jocohistory is to be a one-stop shop for people interested in the county and region,” LaCrone said. “The cemetery work is a piece that isn’t there. And it’s highly unusual.”