News

Grave matter: Headstone conservator shapes up historic cemetery

5/7/2006 The Advocate - By John Nickerson

NORWALK - Using clamps, shovels, stone epoxy, mortar, trowels, hydraulic jacks and lots of muscle, Jonathan Appell is putting together headstones like jigsaw puzzles as he restores one of the city's oldest graveyards.

For the first time in at least a decade, headstone restoration work has begun at the East Norwalk Historical Cemetery. Appell, a headstone conservation specialist and former Greenwich resident, has been hired by the Third Taxing District to preserve 14 headstones and monuments at the cemetery, whose earliest legible marker dates back to 1693.

Just inside the cemetery's East Avenue gate last week, Appell, 45, was putting the finishing touches on a broken blue-slate headstone of Miss Esther Fitch.

The 1771 tablet, which Appell believes was carved in Boston , where many similar headstones were made, was so damaged that the winged-death's-head motif that topped the stone, and much of the inscription, had broken jaggedly off into pieces.

Before Appell could put the fractured marker together with stone epoxy, he had to chisel out mortar used during previous repair work. After the epoxy hardened, he used a small trowel knife to push new mortar into the cracks and crevices to ward off water and harsh weather.

As Appell waited for the mortar to dry, he took a walk around the cemetery and pointed out gravestones and monuments he has righted and repaired.

Standing next to a 125-year-old marble headstone that he did some foundation repairs on - which has begun to dissolve because of acid rain - Appell said he wants to preserve the stones as they are - not make them new.

"We are not trying to re-create. We are trying to preserve the original fabric and keep the cemetery safe," he said.

Appell, who also carves violins, is an experienced carpenter, mechanic and sculptor. He said the cemetery, with more than 1,100 plots, is in average shape compared with other old burying grounds he has visited.

One question he raised, which no one seems able to answer, is what happened to the headstone marking the grave of Col. Thomas Fitch - the Revolutionary War hero who some believe inspired the song "Yankee Doodle" - and his wife Sarah?

Next to a large bronze plaque explaining the Fitches' involvement in the Yankee Doodle legend, lies a brown footstone, which Appell said was used to mark the grave site while the headstone was being carved.

But the original headstone is missing; it was replaced with a white marble slab, carved into a similar shape as the footstone. It was erected in 1953, more than 150 years after Fitch died.

Appell said even if the stone was broken, some pieces should still be around the grave site.

"The original would have the most interest, and that is absent," Appell said.

Christopher Burr, president of the East Norwalk Historical Cemetery Association and a descendant of the Fitch family, said he never realized the stone was a replacement. He said he doesn't know where the original stone could be.

"Clearly, it must have gone somewhere. No one would have thrown it away," Burr said.

Cemetery association member Terry Rooney said the East Norwalk Improvement Association once had a cast of the original tablet on display at the East Norwalk Library, but he doesn't know what happened to the original.

Appell is being paid nearly $5,000 to do the work. Burr said he is pleased with Appell's progress.

"I think he is doing a fantastic job. I wish we could afford to have him do them all," Burr said.

In the cemetery, another 20 stones besides the 14 being worked on now are in dire need of conservation, Burr said. He noted that hundreds more are tipping over.

No one has been in the cemetery to work on the headstones for at least 10 years, Rooney said. The last person hired to make repairs was a mason, who used concrete to patch numerous headstones.

Many of those repairs dried out and the stones have broken again, Rooney said. Appell, on the other hand, has a better understanding of the materials needed to make lasting repairs, Rooney said.

"He is doing wonderful," he said.

Reprinted with permission from The Advocate, Stamford, CT