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A bit OT, but I've always wondered what ultimately happens to cemeteries. I mean, are they owned forever? I guess I don't know-- are they owned by a city or municipality, or a private company? If the latter, what if the company goes under or just doesn't want to own a cemetery anymore?
Each state is different. The link below outlines the laws in VA.
A bit OT, but I've always wondered what ultimately happens to cemeteries. I mean, are they owned forever? I guess I don't know-- are they owned by a city or municipality, or a private company? If the latter, what if the company goes under or just doesn't want to own a cemetery anymore?
They are usually owned by someone, but being maintained is a different story. State laws all differ.
I know my city has over 300 cemeteries, with many being 2-person plots that used to be part of a homestead. Land gets sold but the cemetery remains. There's a master list maintained by the historical society that shows their location.
I checked a few out. You pull to the side of the road and there's a small wooded area. You just walk into the woods, and eventually you see a headstone sticking out of the ground. Usually never a fence, and it's always overgrown. It's essentially abandoned.
Not all like this. Some do have a fence, and are on a cordoned off area of a property. There's one in the corner of a Dunkin Donuts where i live. It's fenced off with 2 gravestones from the mid 1800's in it. Where i live, there are dozens of abandoned cemeteries from the 1700's and 1800's just on the side of a road in a small plot 10x10 or so. I highly doubt there is someone caring for these other than volunteers every decade or so.
Thankfully the OP checked what products to use before they started cleaning them. Apparently the lady in your article didn't.
Quote:
The woman, whose name was not released, was cleaning gravestones at All Hallows Episcopal Church Cemetery to be able to document them for the Billion Graves project, the Capital Gazette reported.
The amateur genealogist scrubbed about 200 grave markers, some of which date back to the 19th century.
But her cleaning technique left the monuments with stripes that could cost the church $10,000 to fix.
Well, and I hired professionals for the stuff that I have no business at all doing. Like resetting the fallen markers.
Know your role.
But, it is surprising how a stone that I didn't even think was marble comes back to be as white as the day it was made after a little time.
I got an email from billion graves that gives headstone cleaning tips. You're using the gold standard to clean the stones with.
The article has photos so people can see what can be achieved by cleaning the stone if it is cleanable. Some of them are amazing, they were black from the elements, but came clean.
Maybe your thread and the tips in the blog will motivate others to clean headstones.
Once upon a time, probably in 1968 or 1969, me and about six of my college buddies (a few being under age) would head to the oldest cemetery in the old town at night and sit under a big old tree and share a couple six packs discussing the meaning of life. Where better? It was a river town with some dimpled unmarked graves from a steamboat explosion in the 1840s and a big marker for the town founder (from the late 1700s) and hundreds somewhere in between. The founder's multi-great-grandson was one of the group and had the same name. We started paying attention and made a couple rubbings on paper of a Revolutionary War soldier and a particularly sad case of a "spinster". Once we had the rubbings on the wall back in our dorm, so many weird and unexplained things started happening that we freaked out. One guy said he saw the woman in his room one night. Things moved around and fell off desks and just odd stuff happened. Of course (this being the '60s) we figured we had unleashed some spirit energy and quickly disposed of the offending rubbings. The weirdness stopped. We learned a lesson but never found the meaning of life.
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