My name is Jason Church. I'm the Chief of Technical Services at NCPTT. We're here
talking about the different materials that you find in historic cemeteries. For me, historic
cemeteries are your public sculpture garden. There's an immense amount of craftsmanship,
material types, sculptures, all kinds of things, historic fences, monuments, everything that you
are really looking for both artistically and historically are found in cemeteries. Not
only are these your public sculpture gardens, filled with amazing sculptures and artistry,
but they're also our tangible link to our historic past. So, these are places that are great to visit
bring school kids, you know, bring history buffs out. Because this is a tangible link to
our past it's not an abstract concept anymore. These are the people who did those things that
we study and we read about. So, really, we want to learn to appreciate historic cemeteries
for lots of reasons and one of them is the wide variety of materials that are found out here.
So, really, this is architecture in miniature. Everything you'll find in historic architecture
you can also find in cemeteries. It's the reason we use cemeteries for a lot of our teaching aids
and a lot of our workshops. So, not only masonry systems, brick, concrete,
center block, but, also iron work, bronze, every stone type we can think of;
they're all out here. And, it's really a beautiful display of materials, not only by themselves, but
the way they interact with each other and that's really important when we talk about conservation.
So, in this video we're going to go around different cemeteries and look
at different materials, different stone types, look at concrete,
metals, look at brick systems, and how those interact with new mortars and historic mortars,
and really look at a variety of materials and what that means to us for conservation. We'r here in
the cemetery looking at different stone types, and there's lots of kinds of stone marble and
limestone. But, primarily modern monuments are all made out of granite. Granite's a great material.
It's not acid sensitive. It's really durable, lasts a long time. So that's why the monument
industry has really shifted to granite. And, we see granite coming around late 1800's,
turn of the century, and becoming more and more prevalent until today. Granite has a wide range of
colors and features, grain types. It's one of the great things about granite. So, we have something
that's very fine grain gray here from Elberton, Georgia beautiful stone. All
the way up to something like this a very sort of molted pink granite here. If you're looking for
trying to match stone or wanting to know exactly what kind of granite you have. My recommendation
is to find a certified memorialist through the National Monument Builders Association.
And, bring them out talk to them maybe take them a photograph. And, nine times out of ten
they can tell you exactly what kind of granite you have and probably what quarry it came from.
Another type of marble here in the cemetery, these often get overlooked people don't realize they're
marble. It's a very small grain structure it's a very gray marble. That has a thin white band in it
these are out of Vermont. And, we see this very gray marble were very prevalent in the Sears
Roebuck catalogs. So, you could actually order these headstones for a very long time starting
around the turn of the century for about 50 years Sears and Roebuck carried these. They all came out
of the same quarry. So, a lot of times when we see these very gray marbles most likely they're
a Sears and Roebuck order. So, we've talked about different stone types in the cemetery,
different materials, but one of the most common and often overlooked are concrete markers. So,
this is a great example of a monument company this particular one is made by the Wade family.
That are preset mold that are cast and these look very much like a production line marble
grave marker. This is actually just a white Portland white sand concrete marker.
They're very often overlooked they can be very formal like this one or very homemade or
vernacular looking but always incredibly important markers especially the more vernacular one
like for example this one here. So, we also have gray concrete markers that look like this much
more vernacular, more homemade, very important. we have to really remember this wasn't something
that a family went and picked out of a catalog. This is someone that actually sat down probably,
most likely knew the person might have been a family member, and actually made. This is
a beautiful one that at one time had a photograph. It probably had a tin type of the deceased maybe a
paper photograph that was behind a sheet of glass, unfortunately those usually don't last. But,
very important markers and we have to treat them very differently as far as repair and cleaning
than we would a stone. But, absolutely important and we should do every effort to preserve these.
So, we've talked a little bit about limewash, and how that's a sacrificial protective coating for
stone, masonry units, concrete, all good things. And, with limewash we have to
every year maybe every couple years put the coatings back on they wear away.
What we see a lot in modern times though is people come through and they what they call
white washing, which is really just applying white latex paint. And, this is a great example.
So, as you can see, these stones here historically they were lime washed and the family would have
come out once a year and put lime wash on them and that has slowly sort of morphed into coming
out and painting with latex paint. Latex doesn't breathe. As we know, water gets in
from the ground, rises up through the stones, it can't get out, and eventually what you get is
a failure of the coating. Luckily this white marble is in great shape underneath. But a lot
of times what you get is actually the failure of the substrate as well. So, you'll have the masonry
or the concrete start to fail underneath the coating. So, we don't want to go with
anything called a tomb paint which is just a weakened latex paint or of course we don't want
to go with a latex paint. We want to use actual lime and water, the traditional white washing.
So, one of the things with white washing we don't recommend, is actually white
washing the stone itself. Definitely, you know historically the concrete ledgers would have been
whitewashed. That really sort of gives them a clean look a bright look.
But, when it comes to the actual stone like this white marble there's really no reason. We can
clean it with something like d2. That's going to get it a nice clean white again. We don't have to
coat it with something extra. It's, you know, if you're using a modern latex it's bad for it the
limewash, won't hurt, it but it eventually fills in the lettering makes it unreadable.
So, really there's no reason to whitewash the actual tombstone. Same with if you look down
the row here. You know, we've got this gray marble. This was never white to begin with,
this is a gray marble. Can't really tell that anymore you know, these thick layers of
of latex paint are covering up, unreadable. Ones like this this is, a concrete marker,
but it's been coated repeatedly to the point that we can't read the epitaph at all any longer.
So that's one difference, also limewash goes on as a really thin coating whereas
this harmful latex goes on as really thick coating completely obscuring our information.
So, we're out here today at American Cemetery, here in Natchitoches, looking at some of the
damage done by a recent hurricane. So, this fence was mangled when a very large tree came down.
And, we get this question all the time is this something that can be repaired,
should it be repaired. And the answer is yes on both accounts. So, our ironwork
becomes it's an important part of the historic landscape of this site.
Replacing these and removing these changes historic character of our cemetery. So we don't
want to do that we want to take the time and the effort to repair these conservator who is trained
in ironwork can absolutely repair this. It's just a matter of a combination of heat straightening
repair work replacing fasteners. This fence in particular is a mix of cast
iron and wrought iron elements and all of this can be repaired and should be repaired.
So, one of the things as cemetery preservationists that we marvel at is how things move in the
cemetery. We're constantly doing repair work to headstones and monuments where pieces are missing
parts maybe chunks of headstones they move. Sometimes vandalism, they've been carried away,
they've been stolen, sometimes they're buried just outside of where we're working. But,
sometimes they move large spaces. So, occasionally we have to be a detective to figure out where
pieces might have come from and where they've gone to. And, this is a good example so in the
recent hurricane a large tree came down in the cemetery knocking this obelisk off of its base.
The tree company had to move this obelisk to get their equipment in and they've left it here so
now we have an obelisk with no identification on it that's quite a distance from its original base
now. We're going to need to bring in a lift to bring that back to its base to reset it
but if that's not done in a few years the institutional memory is going to be gone
and this will be a random obelisk that people will be wondering where it went and is there a base
missing here who's who does this belong to. So, sometimes we have to be that detective to figure
out where pieces go back and they can move a large distance even very large pieces like this one.
It's important when we're doing preservation work to identify the type of stone that the
monument or the headstone is made out of so we can match up like for like.
We don't want to do repair work with a different kind of stone. For example, this mausoleum here
is made out of cherokee white comes out of Tate, Georgia and one of the reasons ways we can tell
is georgia marble has a very large grain structure so we see these large
calcite crystals we can get large shiny spots as the the crystals are turned.
Also, we have an inset here where a window had been that's been replaced with a Tennessee pink
marble of course we can tell that from the color. Also, we have just right here in front of us
this one is a sandstone that's local to here in Louisiana we don't see very many of these
it's not a very prominent stone so this is definitely a locally made grave marker.
So, here we are we're looking at materials and grave sites we have a marble slab on a brick box,
the interaction between these materials. This is a soft mortar probably a lime mortar
we also have probably fairly soft bricks and these bricks now some of them look like we've lost quite
a a number from down at the bottom here. There are companies now that are starting to fire bricks at
low temperatures. Some of them doing wood fired bricks and so you can start buying new materials
that match these bricks. Also, you'll notice how this is probably been hand carved brick here so
you know we got some traditional materials here not modern cements that are joining these.
That would really start destroying the bricks. We just need to start looking at
what these materials are and how to resolve some of these issues that we have missing materials
and how to put those in new new materials back that would allow this to to become complete again.
When we think historic cemeteries, we think about ironwork being fencing. It doesn't have
to be there are a lot of grave markers that were actually made out of iron. We have cast
iron ledgers, cast iron headstones, and another great example is these wrought iron crosses.
These are french style, slave made, and these are individual grave markers. Unfortunately,
they have this very thin sheet of wrought iron and the epitaph would actually be written on here
and as you can see they corrode much quicker. Unfortunately, we can't really make out
this one any longer. There are a few in this cemetery in particular that have bronze plaques
we can read those a little bit better. Unfortunately, these are also a popular theft item
so a lot of these that we had have been stolen. There aren't as many as they once were but very
important historic artifacts that should definitely be documented and preserved.
We've moved a little distance from the brick box you can see in the background, we're a little
bit more shady the sun's not quite getting here. So, there's a little bit more moisture
and you can see the organic growth creeping in on these bricks. Remember,
we have soft bricks. Water moisture coming up and so this is an area where degradation of the
materials happens a little bit faster and so we just need to be aware that we need to maintain
this kind of area or review it a little bit more and and start to do some of this work.
In closing, it's really important to learn to identify the different materials.
Something that might work well for limestone, might be damaging on metals. Something that works
really well to clean concrete, might be damaging the limestone.
It's really important to learn the different materials. That helps us
as conservators establish preservation priorities and planning for our historic cemetery.