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Re: Historic Gravestones



As a genealogist as well as archivist, I have a great interest in gravestones. In most instances, with gravestones, it is the content of the information that is important, rather than the form (an exception could be for someone who was studying stone carvers from the time period in question), so preserving the information by making a reading of the stones might be a better route than taking the actual stones somewhere (not to mention that stones would take up a lot of space). And yes, context is important for gravestone researchers. A genealogist may investigate the stones around those of his ancestors and discover other, previously unknown, ancestors or collateral relatives.

Making a reading of a cemetery, taking care to figure out some way of indicating the position of stones relative to each other, is the best way to preserve the information. When making a reading, be sure to copy exactly what is on the stone, misspellings and all. Don't interpolate other material ("well,  I *know* her maiden name was...") and don't leave anything out (I recently was able to visit an ancestor's grave and found that while the cemetery reading gave only birth and death years, the stones had full dates on them, which was important in proving this person's identity by matching the birth dates on her stone and in her baptismal record). If possible, include photographs of the stones, especially if they have interesting symbols and/or artwork (you would, of course, also describe this in the written transcription, perhaps with drawings of the symbols). 

I once went very excitedly to a graveyard to visit some ancestors' graves, only to find out that the church, in its wisdom, had decided to get rid of all those crumbling old stones, and had erected a monument with the names of the inhabitants of the cemetery in alphabetical order, with birth and death years only. One of the reasons I was excited about seeing those stones was that they had practically a biography of the couple on them, which had been totally destroyed. I was lucky that the stones had been abstracted once and transcribed once. The abstract was in a well-reputed work, but the author had attempted to "fix" something that didn't need fixing, and had lost one important fact by changing a name. The full transcription was in a typescript family history, and did not attempt to fix anything, so was the only really good source I had for the information on these stones.

If you have not already consulted them, you should get in touch with the Association for Gravestone Studies (http://www.gravestonestudies.org/) They should be able to give you some insight into this question, and they also have publications describing proper techniques for collecting information from a cemetery. One of their publications deals with "preparing legislation to protect gravestones from vandalism, theft, and demolition," and it seems to me that removing the stones is a form of demolition. I agree with the person who wrote earlier to say that it might be illegal to remove stones. 




Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist

Culinary Institute of America
1946 Campus Drive
Hyde Park, NY  12538
(845) 451-1757
c_crawfo@culinary.edu

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