Up to a century’s worth of grime is cleaned off of all headstones in Gainesville Cemetery
Gainesville Cemetery board members, from left, Jeff and Taler Nash, Mike Breeding, and Chris, Linda and John Harlin recently arranged for Rob Collins with his Chaney Monument crew to clean all the headstones in the cemetery on County Road 503 south of the Gainesville business district.
A dramatic difference These before and after photos of Sarah E. Conklin’s 1891 headstone show the dramatic change resulting from recent treatment by a biodegradable cleaner followed by power washing.
‘Suffer the little children’ Cleaning this headstone over the 1895 grave of 1-day-old George Turnbaugh revealed the lamb that was carved above the name and the Bible verse engraved at the bottom, “Suffer the little children. . . .” The infant was the son of former Ozark County News and Ozark County Times editor D. D. Turnbaugh and his wife, Maud.
A military history revealed With more than a century’s collection of grime removed from William Roberts’ headstone, passers-by can read the record of his Civil War experience engraved on the back of his headstone.
Up to a century’s accumulation of grime, dirt, pollen, mold and lichen has been washed away from the headstones in the Gaines-ville Cemetery, freshening up the appearance of the pastoral setting and revealing “an amazing amount of history,” one of the cemetery board members said.
Rob Collins of Chaney Monument, with his employees Seth Collins and Patrick Reynolds, spent six seven-hour days on the project, first spraying each headstone with a biodegradable cleaner and then power-washing it. “We had two trucks with water tanks and two power washers going at the same time,” Collins said, adding that they used 4,000 gallons of water to complete the project. “It really makes a huge difference in how they look.”
The crew also leveled up and repaired headstones that had developed a tilt or had fallen over.
Some were buried so deep Collins couldn’t straighten them by digging with a shovel; he needed a backhoe, said Linda Harlin, who serves as the board’s treasurer.
The cemetery board felt it was important to get the stones cleaned to keep the cemetery looking nice and to make the names and inscriptions easier to read, Harlin said, adding that the board is planning to have the cemetery fence repainted in the near future also.
The newly uncovered names and wording on the oldest stones provides a fascinating look back at this area’s history, said cemetery board member Mike Breeding.
He noted the beautifully carved but shattered headstone of Nancy Ellison, who was born in 1796. The wife of Thomas Ellison, she died on July 4, 1870. Collins reassembled the broken pieces of the old marble stone into a frame of concrete so that it’s once again intact.
Several stones in the Gainesville Cemetery mark the graves of Civil War veterans – or perhaps those born during the war. Former board member Helen Conardy told the Times that, a few years ago, when she and current board member John Harlin worked long and hard to complete a plat map of the cemetery, she was particularly taken by one headstone that proudly proclaimed, “Union born.”
The headstone of one Union soldier, William Roberts (1843-1932), lists the Civil War generals he served under: “Buel, Rosecrans, Thoms, Grant and Sherman through Ky., Tenn, Ala and Ga.”
Most Ozark County cemeteries, including the Gainesville Cemetery, depend on donations from families whose loved ones are buried there. To donate to the Gainesville Cemetery, mail checks to the Gainesville Cemetery fund to Century Bank of the Ozarks, P.O. Box 68, Gainesville, MO 65655.