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08/23/2022 01:59 PMIn an effort to preserve the history of former townspeople and where they lived, the Essex Historical Society (EHS) has begun working on a restoration project to clean up the ancient section of the River View Cemetery (RVC), a part of the burial grounds that bears historical significance for the town and its current residents.
“River View Cemetery is a treasure trove of historical information. It demonstrates how much the town has grown since the end of the 17th century, and that’s all three villages,” says Melissa Josefiak, the director of the EHS. “It’s reflected in gravestones, in its art, its inscriptions.”
In collaboration with the RVC and its board of directors, EHS has been leading tours of the burial grounds since summer 2019 and continues to help the interested locate the ancestral graves of former Essex residents. Josefiak said the partnership between EHS and RVC has been another resource for community members of all three of Essex’s villages to learn more about their history.
As part of showcasing the history of the town and its villages, the gravestones of people who once resided in the town centuries ago, the earliest dating back to the 1600s, will be restored in a commitment to preserve the memory of Essex’s earliest residents.
Josefiak attributes natural causes due the location of the burial grounds, adjacent to the North Cove harbor of the Connecticut River, as the reason for the deterioration of many of the gravestone’s over time.
“Obviously being on the river itself, and through erosion and the passage of time, those stones have deteriorated. Especially when you use brownstone, which is easy to be carved, and also delaminates very quickly,” she said.
Much like an older, historical structure, says Josefiak, gravestones bearing historical weight should be maintained as their carving material has decayed due to the variety of natural affecting factors.
The restoration project began in 2021 when the RVC decided to invest the effort, contacting the EHS to prioritize the identification of particular stones that would be in need of cleaning up, according to their historical significance among the thousands of stones sitting in the grounds. According to Josefiak, the factors that lead to the EHS ultimately deciding which stones deserve restoration depended upon what individuals are of an important status to the history of Essex, what stones are in the worst shape, and if there were any overlaps between those two determining ideas.
According to Josefiak, the RVC initially contracted an expert named Martin Johnson from the restoration group Monument Conservation Collaborative, but have also been working with Rediscovering History Inc. since the spring, in order to further expand the clean-up effort. More helping hands in the restoration of the selected stones of interest to the EHS produce greater results in the project, according to Josefiak.
“Their work has just been amazing,” said Josefiak. “You can see the dramatic effects of their work. Having two teams has been very helpful.”
The restoration of the stones in the ancient section of RVC is planned to be a five-year project in total, according Dick Mather, President of RVC.
“It’s been an enlightening and interesting project for us,” he said. “We feel Essex has an historic story to tell, particularly going back to those early years.”
One the techniques that are used to clean up the stones, many of which are of back-breaking weights, is to lift them out of the ground after having sunk overtime due to the excretion of surrounding soils. After they have been hoisted, the preservationists can see what exactly as part of the stones have been buried in the ground, such as stone art or inscriptions that were originally carved into them. Stones are cleaned with a solvent and are sealed to prevent harmful moisture from causing any greater damage. Other stones are made to stand perpendicular to the ground, once tilted on an angle due to the effect of the freeze/thaw cycle on the stone material
Josefiak says that one of the most interesting parts of the restoration project is the discovery of well-preserved footstones that have been sitting beneath the ground next to above-ground stones which she says may have been the result of former landscapers needing to make their jobs easier by not having to work around obstructing objects to their work in maintaining the grounds of RVC. Johnson and Rediscovering History preservationists have discovered new footstones once buried in the ground nearly everyday since restoration efforts began.
Over 100 stones at RVC have been repaired by the two contracting groups since the beginning of the project, about one-third of the amount planned for being cleaned, according to Mather.
Along with the restoration project, the partnership between EHS and RVC is also offering tours of the burial grounds. Tours in October will be offered in conjunction with several events in town that month, including the Scarecrow Festival, and are called Twilight Tours of River View Cemetery, which comprise high overviews of the cemetery and its evolution. Tourists can expect to learn about burial practices from the 17th and 18th centuries, the growth of the burial grounds, and are pointed out particularly historical stones in the ancient section, especially those belonging to Essex residents who were freed former African slaves.