Sunday, April 18, 1999
Restoring early cemetery offers look at people of history
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BURLINGTON — Even though many of them died as early as 1837, a group of volunteers is determined to help them live on.
In the Old Burlington Cemetery in the northwest edge of the Boone County seat, a group of 26 cleaned, reset and repaired some of the county's very old headstones.
“To me, it's like bringing up the Titanic, except it's us doing it,” said David Wilkins of Lexington. “When you take off the moss, not only can we read it, but we can bring some beauty back to it.
“They were people with lives just like ourselves. We didn't know them, but they'd have been interesting to know.”
The project, a workshop put on by the Boone County Historic Preservation review board, was designed to teach the proper methods of conserving and preserving historic gravestones.
Mr. Wilkins and another participant, Bennie Butler of Forest Park, worked to reset a gravestone of a 4-year-old boy who died in 1875. Mr. Wilkins fingered its inscription: “Budded on earth to bloom in heaven.”
“When you look at something like this, you have to think this was somebody's loved one,” Mr. Wilkins said.
The workshop was headed by Minxie and Jim Fannin of Fannin-Lehner Preservation Consultants in Massachusetts, who have worked to preserve historic cemeteries for 11 years.
Cemeteries are “like an outdoor art gallery,” Mr. Fannin said, "they're repositories of history.
“You'll find the same names here as on the streets and on this house and that house. When the stones have gone, you'll have lost a piece of history, but we've shown people how to extend people's lives.”
The cemetery dates to 1830. Susan Cabot, of the preservation review board, said the cemetery became overgrown and in disrepair. Many gravestones are broken, leaning or on the ground.
In 1995, the preservation review board took over the management of the cemetery, in cooperation with Huntington Bank, which administers a trust fund.
“It's a very easy way and a very appropriate way to honor those who went before us, who made our families and our community,” Ms. Cabot said.
And to learn a little history about the county, such as the Revolutionary War colonel, Israel Gilpin, who died in 1834. His gravestone reminds passersby to pause and remember the soldier beneath their feet and the freedom he fought for. Or Alpha Hawes, who died in 1888 at 19.
“It's not the stones,” Ms. Cabot said. “It's the people they represent and their lives.”
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