Follow up to Restoring a Cemetery

Summer's over and the kids are back at school.  I am finally posting after a short break.  The beautiful weather this weekend brought me out to check up on my Spring cemetery restoration project.  Today I took a ride to Our Lady Help of Christian's cemetery in Glenmont where I restored the grave site of my great-great-great grandparents.

I cleaned the stones with D/2 Biological Solution, which is a monument cleaner.  The stones were clearly much cleaner immediately after the initial cleaning.  However, after almost three months since I restored the site, the stones are noticeably brighter and cleaner.  I am extremely satisfied with the results of this product.  A link to D/2 is http://www.gravestonecleaner.com/welcome-to-cemetery-preservation-supply-llc/

Anyone wanting to clean gravestones should check out this product.  It costs $40 per gallon plus shipping but in my opinion it is worth every penny.  Below are final pictures of what this product can do.

Above: This photo was taken today, 29 September 2013

Above: This photo was taken in May 2013


Additional photos from another ancestor's grave site clearly show what D/2 Biological Solution can do for cleaning old marble tombstones.

This grave stone is for John Albert, a German immigrant from Baden.  He is one of my great-great-great grandfathers.  He is also buried in Our Lady Help of Christian's cemetery.  Note the black coloring on the stone.  This is a combination of lichens and the effects of acid rain on the stone.  Around 1980 I cleaned this stone with a wire brush.  I do not remember how "dirty" the stone was but I know now that scraping/rubbing the stone with a wire brush is an incorrect method for cleaning it. This stone was photographed in February 2013.

Note how bright and clear this stone is.I cleaned this stone in June 2013.  This photo was taken today, 29 September 2013.  The cleaning method was to scrub the stone with a soft nylon bristle brush and clean water. This lifted and removed a lot of the loose lichens on the stone.  Then I heavily sprayed the stone with D/2 and after 15 minutes I used the same brush and then re-scrubbed the stone. After another 10 minutes I scrubbed the stone with clean water and the cleaning process was complete. The stone was clean but over a period of a few weeks the stone brightened and became cleaner.  The chemical continues to work after your work is done. 

To clean this stone I spent about 10 minutes of active work to get the job done.  Most of the time spent was on waiting for D/2 to do its work.  This was a very easy process and very rewarding.

My Heritage or Ancestry?

The Internet has greatly changed the genealogy scene since the late 1990s.  Numerous archives both domestic and international have their holdings available for online searches.  This is great for us.  Research at your own leisure from your home.  How can it get any better?

It does get better.  For me, I have been using Ancestry.com for a little over a year now and I am very pleased with its record searches.  I have found numerous records and expanded my tree greatly.  The "hints" that ancestry provides are also very helpful.  The access to all census records up to the recent release of the 1940 census is phenomenal.  I am not an expert on Ancestry but it helps my research and I would recommend it to anyone.  Unfortunately I do have one "beef" regarding Ancestry but it is not with the site itself.  It is with some of its users.  I will get into that later.

Just last week I signed up and paid for another genealogy subscription with the addition of My Heritage to my regular online search databases.  I was hesitant to do this at first because I was already paying for Ancestry and My Heritage offers many of the same searches that Ancestry does; so I would be paying for the same thing twice.  Hopefully they balance and complement each other.

So far I am very happy with My Heritage.  I have not yet done any specific record searches on My Heritage but I am very impressed at the "Smart Matches" that My Heritage has found for me by comparing my uploaded GEDCOM tree to other subscriber's trees.  Presently I have over 3900 individuals in my The Master Genealogist (TMG) database.  After I imported a GEDCOM file of my tree into My Heritage, I came up with over 4700 matches/hits from over 900 subscribers trees.  Obviously many of the matches are incorrect and I am "rejecting/ignoring" those hits.  It will take me quite a while to go through all of these matches.  I am trying to review a number of these each night.

What I am finding with these Smart Matches is that many of the subscribers who have posted their trees online are also direct descendants of my ancestors.  Meaning we are cousins.  Now part of the reason I believe that I am getting so many matches is because most of these hits are on my "Dutch" side.  From what I gather, genealogy is very popular in the Netherlands.  Also Dutch vital records are outstanding.  Civil registration for births, marriages, and deaths began in 1811.  Most of these civil records are searchable online directly from the appropriate provincial archives.

Now with these Smart Matches, I am able to review them and send a confirmation that my "individual" matches the corresponding person in another subscribers online tree.  It is almost an instantaneously way to find others who are researching the same ancestors as you.  Also, after you confirm an individual, the other subscriber can either reject or confirm your find.  Everyday I have been getting almost 100 confirms from other researchers.  I will have to check the sources for this new found data but it appears to be a very quick way to find distant cousins who are also genealogists.

Very soon I will be contacting these new found cousins of mine and hopefully I will not end up with the disappointment that I have had numerous times when I contacted other cousins who listed their trees on Ancestry.  Perplexing I find it when someone posts their tree on Ancestry and when I contact them about "our" relative, especially with stories about these individuals, the other person does not respond to your query.  Now these are not people who listed their trees a few years ago.  They are very recent users who still access Ancestry on a regular basis, when I checked their profiles.  They are also local to where I live.  They must be half-hearted genealogists; not in with both feet.

As mentioned, I am happy so far with my little experience on My Heritage especially with the smart matches, I hope that my Dutch cousins will be interested in swapping data afterwards.

National Palantines to America National Conference

An interesting upcoming genealogical conference coming to Albany next week at the Desmond Americana Hotel is the National Palantines to America National Conference.  Details are below.

Palatines to America Calendar Details

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Palatines to America, 2013 National Conference will be held June 19-22, 2013 in Albany, New York at The Desmond Hotel, 660 Albany Shaker Road, Albany, NY 12211, phone 800-448-3500

Enjoy speakers Henry Z “Hank” Jones, Jr. F.A.S.G.,Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer, Joseph Lieby, Jeff O’Connor, Hans Pohlsander, and Ernest Thode and Peter Christoph.

Take advantage of a bus trip to the Mohawk Valley historic sites on Wednesday, the 19th before the conference formally begins! It will be a full day bus tour of the historic sites in the Mohawk Valley area. It will cost $60.Departure will be at about 8am and return to the Desmond at 6pm. A description of this bus tour is attached.

The second tour is the trip to the NYS Library and Archives. It will take place on Thursday, the 20th. It will leave the Desmond at 9:30 am and leave the Library at 4:30 pm to return to the Desmond. The trip will tour some of the historic sites in Albany before doing to the Library for an orientation and the opportunity for research. The cost of that trip will be $40.

Palatines to America, PO Box 141260, Columbus, OH 43214
Phone: 614-267-4700
E-mail: palatinenotes@gmail.com

How time changes things

Time flies.  We all know that expression.  And it does.  Time passes by very quickly and things change along with it.  Recently I was looking at some photos of some cousins at their home on Central Avenue from the 1940s and 1950s.  I knew the address and I am familiar with the area where it was located but could not picture this home in that area.  

At that time the exodus out of the city into the suburbs had just begun.  Central Avenue in the Roselleville area up to Fuller Road was still somewhat rural.  There was very little commercial expansion; simply a few small farms, single family homes, and a few two family flats.  Below is a photo of my cousin's home from the 40s-50s.

It looked like a very nice well kept home with brown cedar shakes.  I just could not picture this house; being somewhat perplexed I decided to head over and check it out.  What I found was a little surprise.  Over the past 70 years, I am sure the property has changed hands numerous times with each owner doing their own revisions to their own tastes.  Below is a photo of the home today.

Over the years I am sure that this building was converted into a commercial property with a business on the first floor and a small apartment on the second floor.  I think that there are two apartments in the home today.  We all have own tastes and likes.  I like the way my cousin's home looked in the past with landscaping, grass, and walkways not the commercial look of today.

Restoring a Cemetery Plot (part III)

Continued from part II

The gravestone bases were then set on top of the leveled foundation stone and pinned to prevent movement. Next the gravestones were set and pinned to the bases.

Note the blackness on the gravestones and especially on the bases.  This, I read is a combination of lichens and the effects of acid rain on the marble stone.  I have D/2 Biological Solution which I sprayed on the the stones and then scrubbed with a soft brush.  It did appear to start to clean the stones but with impending thunderstorms and heavy rains my focus was mainly to upright the gravestones.  I will be coming back to fully clean the stones with the D/2 which costs $40 per gallon and then another $12 to ship.  Also, I need to epoxy the grave stones to their bases to fully secure them.

This is a before photograph taken Sunday May 5, 2013 showing the condition of my ancestor's gravesite before work was performed to correct this.

Above is after the work completed on Saturday May 11, 2013 minus the final cleaning and epoxy.

Restoring a Cemetery Plot (part II)

Ahh, I most definitely, and probably my father, are now feeling the pain, tight/sore back muscles from restoring the grave site of my great great great grandparents Michael & Magdelena Behrhof and some of their children at Our Lady Help of Christians cemetery in Glenmont.  The project took a little under four hours to complete.  It was hard work digging up the marble bases and the lower foundations and then leveling them.  But it had too be done.  All four grave stones had toppled over from age, gravity, settling of the soil, and I am sure the stones were hit by lawnmowers over the years.  

A series of photographs and details will be used to explain how this was accomplished.  Unfortunately the project is not 100% complete.  The stones need to be fully scrubbed with a monument cleaner called D/2 Biological Solution and the upper stones will need a monument epoxy spread in between the upper stone and the lower base to fully secure them.  All of the stones have been re-pinned with new steel rod.

Plenty of hand tools, levels, rakes, shovels, stone dust, crusher-run, a hammer-drill, a portable generator, steel rods, tampers, water, and cleaning materials were brought to the cemetery.  I did not want to forget anything that I might need!  The area looked like a construction zone.

After the grave stones were moved out of the way and the lower bases also removed, the bottom foundation was dug up and removed.  It was tilted approximately 45 degrees.  Very far from being level.

Next the soil under the bottom foundation was tamped down and a crusher run base was laid over the tamped soil.  The crusher run was then tamped down (upper photo).  A layer of stone dust was then put over the crusher run and leveled (lower photo).

The foundation stone was then placed on top of the leveled stone dust and checked for levelness (above picture).  Next the area around the foundation was back-filled and tamped (lower picture).  Note the drilled holes in the foundation.  Originally these holes had steel nails which held the base stone to the foundation.

Although this next photo is a gravestone base for a different tombstone at the Behrhof plot, it shows the new steel pins which were measured, cut, and installed in the base.  The actual gravestone then was set upon this base stone.  Holes were already drilled in the gravestone to accommodate the steel pins.  Note the cracks in this base stone.  My next project here will be to epoxy and seal the cracks.  The stone is cracked but not broken.

The remainder of this project will be continued in part III.

Restoring a Cemetery

Now that the warmer weather is here I will be restoring and repairing the grave site of my great great great grandparents, Michael and Magdelena Behrhof.  They immigrated from Bayern around 1849 and are buried in Our Lady Help of Christians cemetery in Glenmont.  It is a small family plot with only four gravestones.  However in the last few years all of the stones have fallen over.  

To prevent further damage and deterioration to their gravestones I will be digging up the lower foundation stones, removing them, laying and compressing crusher run stone, and then leveling the foundation stone with stone dust.  The base needs to be firm and level.  Next, all of these foundation bases and gravestones had holes drilled into them and the gravestone had a steel pin which held the stone upright on the base.

Over time these pins have deteriorated, rusted, and have broke toppling the stone.  I intend to replace the pins with stainless steel rod the size of the drilled hole opening.  This will prevent the rods from rusting and breaking in the future.  

This project will be a work-in-progress.  Perhaps I can finish it in one day?  But I will be creating another post with the actual procedure on how I did this work.  Also I will be cleaning the stones with a product called D/2 Biological Solutions.  D/2 is made specifically for cleaning marble.  It costs $40 per gallon and should be enough to clean upwards of 30 gravestones.  I will be posting how this chemical works.

Note the drilled holes in the base of the gravestone and the base stone.  The stones will be re-pinned with stainless steel rod.

The stone of Peter Behrhof on the left is still amazingly pure white without any cleaning.