Sharing these photographs to remind us that May is National Historic Preservation Month!
Please encourage your county genealogical and historical societies in Ohio to include cemeteries as a focus for their meetings and activities!
Please encourage your county genealogical and historical societies in Ohio to include cemeteries as a focus for their meetings and activities!
Whether it be touring cemeteries, holding ghost walks, or offering hands-on cemetery / gravestone preservation workshops, cemeteries are places for the living. Places for honoring those who came before us and keeping their gravesites in respectable condition without damaging them -- ensuring that any cleaning, repairing and re-setting of gravestones is done using DO NO HARM best practices. That means opting for the least abrasive / aggressive methods and tools as possible (think NO POWER TOOLS!); assessing first if any work is deemed to be needed at all.
Also, remember that a historic cemetery should stay a historic cemetery -- keeping the gravestones in place on their original gravesites. Unfortunately, good intentions can go overboard and turn a cemetery into something it isn't. A cemetery should not have to lose its character and identity to be in good condition.
