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Date: 6/14/2022
WARE – On the morning of June 11, the Aspen Grove Cemetery had a gravestone cleaning workshop on Pleasant Street.
The event was supported in part by the Ware Cultural Council and Mass. Cultural Council. President TaMara Conde of the Historic Gravestone Services of New England ran the workshop. Participants were taught how to clean a gravestone the proper way, what solutions to put on the stones for cleaning and how to keep them in good condition.
Chairperson Craig Simmons of the Ware Cemetery Commission said, “It started out as a project to clean veterans’ monuments from the Civil War Era, and it’s developed into a workshop to instruct families how to clean their own cemetery markers.”
Aspen Grove has been in existence since 1852. The oldest gravestone in town goes back to the late 1700’s. Prominent figures who are all buried in Aspen Grove include Baseball Hall of Famer William Arthur “Candy” Cummings, Minot Wood, William Dearden, a former editor of the Ware River News, Jean Whetherby, part of a group that helped save the woolen mills from leaving Ware in 1938 and the Gilbert family who ran the mills in Ware. They have one person in their cemetery who was a congressman for three weeks, Charles A. Stevens. There are also a number of families who bought lots in Aspen Grove when the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir began. Family remains were moved to surrounding towns and the families could buy lots. The most well-known resident of one of the towns is Dr. William Segur formerly of Enfield, MA.
Over the years, Simmons said nature does strange things to the distinct types of gravestones. They get moldy; lichens and moss often grow on stones especially in shady areas and darken parts of the stones. “It’s a job that should be done on a rotating basis,” Simmons replied. “You should do it every few years to keep the stones clean. The solution we use is D2. It brightens the stone but doesn’t hurt the stone itself. It usually keeps a stone looking better for three to five years and makes follow up stone cleanings easier.”
Aspen Grove tries to do these workshops every couple of years depending on the availability of people that can teach it and the number of participants.
“We are trying to provide useful information so families may clean their own stones if they have a limited amount of time to learn,” Simmons responded. “At the very least they will learn the basics though experience is always the best teacher. Hopefully as the pandemic eases, more people would like to get involved and this would be a way to do community service for individuals or groups.”
To learn more information about Aspen Grove Cemetery, call 967-9626 or email aspengrovecemetery@gmail.com.