Clarksburg Cemetery Stones Being Repaired
 A conservation crew is working on nearly a dozen gravestones in Clarksburg Cemetery this week. |
CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Nearly a dozen historic stones in the Clarksburg Cemetery are getting some much needed repair.
The town hired Monument Conservation Collaborative of Norfolk, Conn., to straighten and repair 10 leaning gravestones and restore that of Laban Clark. Town meeting approved spending $4,900 for this year in what is expected to be a 10-year project to restore the cemetery.
"The ones they're working on are very straightforward," said Martin Johnson, a conservator and a founder of the conservation company. "They were hazardous, they were loose, but fairly straightforward."
His crew was working on Friday to begin digging out the footings and resetting the 19-century monuments. Some merely need to be straightened; others need new structural adhesive as well.
Johnson estimated the work to take four or five days.
"The loose and leaning stones were the priority this year," he said. "[Town Administrator Carl McKinney's] priority would be to absolutely identify and find those stones that could fall."
The 11th stone will need more work because it's fallen off its base and cracked.
"Mr. Laban Clark, who obviously I think is important, that one is going to be the most complicated," Johnson said.
He said MCC's other founder, conservationist Irving Slavid of North Adams, would likely work on that one. Slavid also operates his own restoration company and recently restored the century-old plaques on the new Colegrove Park Elementary School.
The 16-year-old Monument Conservation Collaborative has worked in a number of local cemeteries, including Southlawn in Williamstown and the Mahaiwe Cemetery in Great Barrington. It specializes in historic graveyard conservation and has worked on such varied projects as the restoration of a graveyard devastated by a tsunami in American Samoa to restoring the memorial plaque on George Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon.
Johnson said cemeteries tend to have a 100-year maintenance cycle; in this area, snow, ice and frost can shift and damage stones.
The newly straightened stones in the Henderson Road cemetery will be safer and look better.
"It's certainly going to make a difference but it's going to bring up the fact that there is more than another 11 to do," he said. "Once you get them plumb and nice and straight ... it sort points out the ones that aren't."
Tags: cemetery, historic preservation, restoration,
