As each year passes …

The inscriptions that were lovingly placed on these headstones begin to wear away. On some, the sides look blank until you rub your hand over them and find words waiting there. When rubbed with chalk the letters appear, yet sometimes they still remain hidden no matter how hard you try. They are gone forever. Sometimes you find a stone that has six inches of sod on top of it. Folding the sod back you find a perfectly preserved stone that no acid rain or weather has damaged. Someone’s history is still intact.

It’s this history that we are trying to save. Recording the information and a photo of the stone or what’s left of it we are ensuring that a part of a family is never forgotten. So very often the records tell us that a stone was there, yet in 2012 it is gone completely. The new stones are clear but in another twenty years will they still be there for us? Now some will be recorded and available forever.

Ruth Street
Project Coordinator 1998 – 2013