by David Flint
“This is our history – our outdoor museums,” said Joe Ferrannini, who is passionate on the topic of preserving local cemeteries and burial plots. Last Monday he shared his experiences and expertise with members and guests of the Stephentown Historical Society gathered at the Heritage Center. The Society has embarked on an ambitious project to fix up and restore some 40 burial grounds scattered about the Town. Members are still in the stage of surveying and recording conditions of the plots. When that is finished they will identify what needs to be done to repair, maintain and preserve them.
Ferrannini, who now runs a business called Gravestone Matters that provides consulting, training, cleaning and repair services, was a valuable resource to call upon, and, being from Hoosick Falls,
he’s right in Stephentown’s back yard.
Ferrannini chose a very ambitious project of his own to speak about, one that he worked on shortly after taking on the unpaid job in Pittstown as Chairman of the Cemetery Committee. The job was to look after 64 abandoned cemeteries and burial grounds in various stages of neglect and basically just to remove the weeds and mow two or three times a year. He expanded the job, joined the Association For Gravestone Studies, took classes on stone preservation and proper methods of cleaning and set about with a passion to restore as far as possible these outdoor museums.
One cemetery in particular was almost totally overgrown and could not even be seen from the road. It was the Geer family cemetery in Brunswick, in which the most prominent gravestone is that of Colonel Erastus Geer (1789-1854), a veteran of the War of 1812. Ferrannini said the graveyard was in such a state that the task of restoring it seemed overwhelming and it was hard to know where to begin. He began in June 2005 by removing a fallen spruce tree and then step by step, with only two or three volunteers helping, he began clearing out all the brush and tree limbs and poison ivy from around the stones and from the surrounding iron rail fence with its marble posts. Town
trucks hauled away five tandem dump truck loads of debris. Many loads of top soil were brought in, and the grass was restored. When at last you could see that there was indeed a cemetery under all that stuff, Ferrannini built a wooden staircase to provide access to the main entrance from the road. Then he set to work on the stones, carefully excavating, leveling bases, resetting stones and cleaning and piecing together stones that had broken. He showed slides of some of the restoration work. One group of stones that required a lot of work were the memorials of three young sisters, Fanny, Adria and Emma Slade and their grandparents. He noted that someone in years past had evidently picked up the fallen stone of one of the grandparents and leaned it against a tree, not a good thing to do as it subsequently fell again and broke in pieces.
His goal was to conserve and preserve, not to attempt to restore to pristine condition. The before and after pictures Ferrannini displayed show a marvelous transformation, an amazing example of what can be done by volunteers who care and know what they are doing.
Ferrannini repaired some of the broken stones with a special type of epoxy and used lime mortar in some places. He likes to avoid blind pinning and tends to use “the gentlest means possible.”
Many of the stones in the Geer plot just needed cleaning. Ferrannini avoids chemical cleaning agents, relying on plenty of water and a gentle scrub brush or tooth brush. He will, however, use a special biocide to retard the recurrence of lichen and moss that eat away at the stone. He does not use cement to reset stones as it provides more of a handle for frost to grab onto; he prefers just to provide good drainage around the stone. Some stones, he said, are too fragile or too far gone to attempt to save, so one should do no further harm and just leave them alone.
Asked about rubbing to record epitaphs, Ferrannini said it is permissible to rub slate stones only, but he saw no point in rubbing in the age of digital photography. He gave a tip for photographing gravestones that are hard to read. Provide the proper lighting, capturing the sunlight with a large mirror at about 1 pm and directing it across the stone at just the right angle.
Historical Society President Pat Flint said she has a dream of one day seeing all of the little cemeteries and family burial plots in Stephentown restored so that people can use them in researching their genealogy. She believes that Joe Ferrannini’s presentation may already have inspired some to volunteer in this effort.