17 July 2009

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

With sunny skies and cool breezes, conditions were perfect for a delightful, productive workday on Friday. We were 14 volunteers, with "Friends" from as far away as Wasilla, Alaska, joining in. Regional Parks had ready for us the indispensable equipment trailer and dump truck, both of which we put to good use. In addition to our usual tasks of clearing away debris and battling the ivy, we continued to make great progress in resetting our headstone bases. Along the way, we uncovered a row of graves west of "Robertson row," more "bits" of footstones, and made progress in redefining our paths.

Spring Hill has around 70 major monuments that we have uncovered so far. Most of them have slotted bases into which the headstone fits. We do have several stones without bases -- extra long headstones designed to anchor directly into the soil. Two such - Darius Martin and Martha Small - were reset on Friday, as were the smaller Ward headstones and footstones. The large square bases for both the Titus and Ward monuments were successfully leveled and reset, and Levinia Parmeter's large monument is now happily upright. Of the almost 70 monuments, we have at least leveled bases on more than a dozen of them. We have many more to go, but I am very pleased with our progress. Thank you to all the volunteers who lent their muscle and engineering skills to these efforts!

While Patsy was clearing debris from around the Robertson area, she came across an upright, metal, OLeary funeral home marker. Jeremy, Sonoma County’s cemeterian, said that this type of marker was used by funeral homes to mark burials without headstones (in some cases headstones were on order but the burial preceded the stone). In examining the area, there is a row of at least three graves just west of the Robertson / Parmeter row of burials. The OLeary marker that Patsy discovered looked like it had, at one time, had a thin narrow metal strip which would have had the name of the burial. Unfortunately, we did not find the strip with a name on Friday. Robertson/Parmeter and related descendants are asking relatives about other possible Spring Hill Burials in an attempt to identify the "new" graves.

The "Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery" and Sonoma County Regional Parks began restoration efforts late in October of 2006, after title to the cemetery was recognized by Sonoma County. Just to give a small snapshot of the kind of progress that has been made in the 2 1/2 years we have been working on the cemetery, I have attached a picture of the Ward stones as I found them in 2005 before any restoration had begun, and one that was taken on Friday. I can't thank you all enough for supporting the effort to bring dignity back to this very peaceful and historic spot.

There is much work still to do - so please mark your calendars and come join us on August 21st!

The Ward Stones in 2005

The Ward Stones in 2009