Uncovering the Past: Dean Volunteers Restore History in Local Cemetery

Every year around Halloween, Rob Lawson, professor of History, leads a Halloween history tour through Dean and Franklin, sharing stories of the town’s founders, local lore, and of course, a haunting or two. But last year, Robin Bowman, assistant to the dean of the School of Liberal Arts, noticed something even more shocking than a ghost: that the grave markers in the oldest part of the cemetery had fallen into disrepair or were covered with dirt, lichen and hundreds of years of decay.

She reached out to the Franklin Historical Museum and Franklin Cemetery Association, where she learned that while they have a group of volunteers to maintain the grounds of the cemetery and some of the newer markers, there was no one to clean the historic stones.

“I asked if I were to find someone who could train us on how to properly maintain the integrity of the stones and clean them, would they object to us getting a group together and doing that?” Bowman explained. “I thought it would be a neat project for students, for faculty and staff and for the community, and it would be a good way for Dean and the community to work together.”

After finding someone to train them on stone preservation, researching supplies, and soliciting funding from various groups on campus, Bowman’s proposal got approved by the board of the Franklin Cemetery Association last December. Because of weather concerns (cleaning during times of freezing temperatures could compromise the integrity of the stones) and scheduling availabilities, Bowman and a group of Franklin community members and Dean faculty and staff were finally trained how to clean the stones this past August. In September, they then held a larger preservation event with Dean students.

Bowman pre-selected a group of marble stones for the volunteers to clean, because marble brightens up more quickly than stone or slate, and she wanted students to immediately see the impact of their work. By cleaning the stones with a combination of water, D2 biological solution and gentle scrubbing, volunteers were able to remove decades of debris and restore the stones so that details were readable and the markers could be inventoried for the Franklin Cemetery Association. The biological solution the stones are cleaned with continues working over time, so the stones that the volunteers worked on last month have brightened even more over the past several weeks.

“One of the most important things that we were taught was do no harm,” Bowman said. “You know you want to bring the stone back, not to its original state, but you want to make it readable and identifiable to people who are looking at it. You can do that if you're careful."

“The students did a fantastic job,” she added. “They were enthusiastic. They enjoyed themselves, they were happy to see the progress they made. They asked great questions. I had a great time. It seems like a strange thing to say when you're in a cemetery, but I really enjoyed the camaraderie and the and the sight of students working really hard at a volunteer project that benefits the community.”

It was also important to Bowman to choose markers not of the prominent historical figures buried in the cemetery, but to give the same level of care and respect to the markers of ordinary people.

“It’s a nice feeling to be able to bring those stones back to the community so that they can see who is buried there,” she explained. “The care with which some of these stones were carved and inscribed, and the poetry that's written on them and the beautiful icons and inscriptions. It's obvious that the people who left those memorials for their loved ones cared a great deal about the people that were buried there. To have people 200 years later be able to go back and look and see – even if it wasn't someone of great wealth or prestige or a public figure – people can still see that there's someone that was loved very much, who was left there. I want there to be resources that can be allocated to the smaller stones and to the less prestigious individuals in that cemetery because, in my opinion, they're no less important. We were all on the planet for however long we were here, and we all made our contributions. And just because one person chose one path and another chose another path doesn't mean they're any less important.”

As a project sponsored by the Humanities in Action Initative at Dean, the impacts go far beyond the immediate cleaning of the stones. Bowman hopes to hold these restoration events regularly and continue engaging the Franklin community, as well as explore opportunities for students to complete internships, to help digitize and inventory the history present in the cemetery and to raise funds for repairs beyond their capabilities.

Throughout the entire project, however, the goal has never been to make the cemetery look brand new – rather, it is to preserve the history found inside for generations to come.

“I don't want the cemetery to look like all of the stones were just placed there,” Bowman said. “I don't want them all to be shiny and bright so that it looks like a new cemetery, because that takes away from the historic feeling of it. I don't think it will ever get that way – because not all of the stones are marble, and the slate stones will never be bright and shiny. But our objective is not to make these stones look new. It's just to bring them back to a place where they can be identified.”

To see the work the volunteers did in cleaning the stones, and to learn more about the history of the cemetery and the Town of Franklin as a whole, join Rob Lawson’s Dean and Franklin History Halloween Cemetery Tour each October.