News

Graveyard Guru

By Daniel D'Ambrosio

September 27, 2007 - You probably didn't notice the marble monument listing badly to the right in Hartford's Ancient Burying Ground downtown.

It's easy to miss or ignore the graveyard, the final resting place for many of Hartford's founders and early white settlers, overshadowed as it is by the monolithic United Technologies skyscraper, which bathes the cemetery in a weird golden light on sunny days.

The monument, erected by George Beach in memory of his mother Mrs. Lucy Whitman, who died in 1801, includes a rectangular base with the inscription, topped by an obelisk rising to perhaps 8 feet; in its day topped by an urn of flowers, according to gravestone conservator and monumental mason Jonathan Appell of West Hartford.

Appell, one of only a handful of people in the country who specialize in restoring ancient gravestones, righted the leaning 2,000-pound monument last week by himself with little more than picks, shovels, rock bars and two jacks. Plus a whole lot of intuition and skill. He did it by carefully digging underneath the low sides of the monument until he hit solid rocks.

"The hardest part is digging under the low side because you're removing something supporting it theoretically," said Appell. "But if you're careful and you leave enough around it then you shouldn't have a problem. It takes a lot of judgment."

Next, Appell poured concrete footings for the jacks, lifting the monument until it was plumb, and securing it with temporary wooden blocks underneath the corners.

The final step was to pour a new foundation that connected the monument to the stable rocks below it, then infill with dirt and pack it down. By Friday, the job was done, with little evidence left behind that Appell had ever even been there, and George Beach's heartfelt tribute to his departed mother standing straight and true.

Appell, who began his career by installing new monuments and gravestones but quickly migrated to more rewarding historic restoration work, has plied his trade in graveyards throughout Connecticut, and in cities in about a dozen states, including as far west as Cheyenne, Wyo., where he acted mostly in an advisory capacity for the city workers charged with maintaining the city's cemeteries.

He also spent a summer working in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., where 19 senators and 71 representatives have been buried since 1807, not to mention J. Edgar Hoover.

Appell, the youngest of five children in an academic family where both his mother and father were university professors, always had a knack for working with his hands.

"I went to school for violin making actually," said Appell. "I was a carpenter and involved in numerous trades before I got into this. It was a natural progression to get into historic preservation. It's more interesting and less redundant than new installations where there's high pressure to get it done."

This week, Appell is in Greensboro, N.C., where a private association is planning a major restoration of a local cemetery in anticipation of its 200th anniversary next year.

"One individual in charge was quite successful in his career and is very interested in the town's history," said Appell. "He has personally funded a lot of work there."

As in Cheyenne, Appell will spend most of his time in Greensboro training the locals to do the restoration work themselves.

"I see a big need for [training] because there are historic graveyards and cemeteries in every single town and city in America," said Appell. "A few dozen specialists are not going to be able to keep up."

Like the Ancient Burying Ground, the Greensboro cemetery has some leaning monuments they're interested in righting, except that one of them is about 30 feet tall, according to Appell. Not only that, it's impossible to reach the monument with any power equipment like a backhoe or excavator.

"If I touch it at all I'll put in temporary supports like guy wires, and use comealongs to keep that under tension," said Appell. "That way it's less of a load when we jack it up. That's a pretty touchy thing."

Appell often finds himself faced with challenging logistics — just getting to a snapped stone for repairs can be an ordeal.

"Sometimes I work in places I can't even get my truck near, way up a hill," said Appell. "I spend a lot of time and labor walking back and forth."

The Beach monument in the Ancient Burying Ground presented an ideal situation in that regard — close to home, and a parking spot for his truck less than 50 yards away. Appell was reluctant to discuss what he charges for repairing gravestones and monuments, pointing to the wildly varying conditions as an important cost consideration, but he said most of his jobs, including the one in the Hartford, fall into the $3,000 to $6,000 range.

He said in places like Boston, where the graveyard restoration work is put out for bid, "everything gets escalated because of paperwork and insurance."

"They might fix 20 or 30 stones for $100,000," said Appell. "I try to avoid that whole scenario."

Boston was the epicenter of stone carving in America during the colonial period. The Boston carvers worked in the slate typical of the area, creating some of the most beautiful and enduring headstones of the era.

"Slate tends to weather very well," said Appell.

From Boston, skilled carvers spread out into the rest of New England and stones carved in Boston were also shipped by boat to cities as far south as Savannah, Ga. and Charleston, S.C. The Ancient Burying Ground has several slate headstones from Boston.

There were also middlemen doing a brisk business in blank headstones. The blanks would include elaborate floral designs along their borders but would leave off the inscription. A less skilled carver could then etch out the lettering.

"They could buy a bunch of them and go peddle them," said Appell. "There are documented cases of people doing that to make a living."

In Connecticut, brownstone was the prevalent material for headstones, with the largest quarry in North America in what was then East Middletown, and is now Portland.

"A tremendous amount of brownstone came out of there," said Appell. "Unfortunately it was not the best quality with a lot of clay. It tends to deteriorate quickly. That's why there are so many stones that need restoration."

In addition to natural deterioration, Appell faces a big problem from the fast and powerful riding mowers that are used to cut the grass in most cemeteries. Careless operators clip the stones regularly. He pointed out many examples in the Ancient Burying Ground, including a recent deep scratch across the entire face of a small brownstone marker.

"You can always tell if it's current damage, the scratches and chips come out as a different color," said Appell. "Sometimes a hard hit will snap a stone, especially marble, which is thinner. These guys go fast, they're out to make money. Speed and historic materials don't really coexist that well."

An audio slide show on Appell and his work is available here.