26 February 2016

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

We had a very successful start to our 2016 work season. Conditions were foggy but dry, and the sun came out to greet us about halfway through our day. The cemetery had received quite a bit of rain early in the winter. Now conditions are drier, but the cemetery remains moist. Nine of us gathered to clean up the winter debris. We not only accomplished our task, but also made another discovery.

Most of our efforts were in clearing paths and the area around headstones. The first two pictures show the cemetery as we found it; full of downed branches and leaves. The next two are of our clean up efforts which included raking the paths, picking up fallen branches, and hauling debris to the dump truck. There was so much to collect on the cemetery floor that we overfilled our dump truck and had to make a second pile to be cleared away by Regional Parks in the next few days.

Towards the end of our session, Patsy had a "find" (5th picture). It looks to be an elaborate base. We had to dig fairly deep to see it, and we are in hopes that whatever was on top is buried somewhere nearby waiting for us to discover it at our next work session (April 8).

The new "find" is located fairly close to the road in the Robertson/Parmeter area of the cemetery, just east of William J Robertson's grave. The sixth picture shows the Robertson/Parmeter area looking east, and the "find" is in the center of the picture where you can see Larry standing looking down at it. Do any of you Robertson/Parmeter/Herbert etc descendants have any ideas on who the burial might be?

That particular area of the cemetery is a few feet higher than the road. Patsy says that the Robertson clean up crews used to use that area to pile collected refuse from clearing the other graves. We are planning to use probes and do more digging of that area in April.

The last picture shows today's volunteers, with the addition of Seamus from Regional Parks who kindly organized the tool trailer and support for us today.

Many thanks to all of you who joined in our efforts today, and to Regional Parks for the very welcome support they continue to provide us. Remember, our next workday will be Friday, April 8, 2016. Please come and join us if you can!

Best Regards,

Sue

Attachment #1
Cemetery

Attachment #2
Debris

Attachment #3
Jim

Attachment #4
Jerry

Attachment #5
New Find

Attachment #6
Clean Path New Find

Attachment #7
Group