Why I Did the Project

The cemetery, containing around 100 stones, has been in bad repair for some time. The stones in the cemetery are very old, mostly from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. No records had been kept of the information. Whether due to natural causes or vandalism, the stones have often been knocked over in the cemetery, and a new plan for action was needed. Enter my Eagle Scout project! After about fifteen hours of planning, the 100 hour clean-up portion of the project took place on June 2, 2001. We cleaned off stones, straightened stones that were leaning over, laid down stones that had fallen or were about to fall, and found appropriate places for certain stones that were in the pile. One example of this would be that of Henry Chubb. The bottom stone in the picture had been in the pile, but we deemed it appropriate to place it in its original location.

Who Helped

An Eagle Scout project must be of significant magnitude, but no certain time limit is imposed. Mine ended up consisting of 175 hours, 40 hours of my own time, and 135 hours of help from the following people:

Ken & Kenny Fultz
John Gemmer
James & Eileen Lentz
Doug Newell
James, Deb, Jon, Ken, Jared, & Rebecca Peiffer
Adam Scibek
Warren Swanger
David Vogel
Oliver Wagner
George, John, Joe, & Jason Yaede

I am truly apprective of their help during this project. Without them, none of this would have been possible. I would especially like to thank the Peiffer family for their help in recording the information. They spent 40 hours combined gathering and compiling the information on the stones. I am appreciative of their help with this aspect and their services rendered during the clean-up project.

Click HERE to view some photographs of the work in progress.

Donations

Klinger Lumber, in Elizabethville, (Pennsylvania) donated seventeen large bags of marble chips to place around the stones, and cement to hold some of the leaning stones in place. Millersburg Hardware in Millersburg discounted the soft-bristled paintbrushes we used to clean the stones with. Giant Food also gave us a small discount on lunch. All other tools used were donated by myself or one of the people listed above.

Changes Made

We had originally planned to lay down most of the stones, but we found that some stones were deeper than we anticipated. Therefore we decided to straighten many, rather than dig them out and lay them down flat. Also, the pile of stones were mostly footstones, containing little or no information. So we simply replaced them neatly to prevent further eroding.

Download the Information

Click HERE to download a copy of all of the information we have recorded and a printable map of the cemetery. Please note that this file is a Zip file. If you don't have a Zip compression utility, try WinZip.