by Marilyn Long
As previously reported, 7 or 8 years ago, our friends, Steve & Cathie Timmis and my husband Steve and I visited several states to find cemeteries where relatives were buried. One of these was in Bucyrus, Ohio. We found the isolated cemetery, but it was so overgrown, we couldn’t find the gravestone we were looking for. We vowed to return one day and clean out that little cemetery and find that stone! Unfortunately, my husband passed away last January without ever returning.
On Oct. 24th and 25th, thinking of him, we finally cleaned enough of the cemetery to find the headstone of his great-great-great-grandfather, Peter Stockman. We want to thank the farmer who owns the ground where the cemetery is located, Jerry Martin. We weren’t able to drive back as we originally thought because of the recent rain. We had to carry our tools (rakes, clippers, chain saw & weed whacker) about 600 yards back to the cemetery. Attached are pictures showing how it looked the morning of the 24th and how it looked when we left that afternoon. It felt like we had accomplished something, but we had the help of a lot of people. We want to thank Scout Troop 106 from Bucyrus who took this on as a service project. The Scoutmaster was Melissa Gee with the Assist. Scoutmaster, Nicki Martin. The boys were Luke Biaderman, Russell Gee, Sam Martin, and Jeremy Fry. The boys thought it was like a treasure hunt. They would clean out areas and find gravestones that were covered up. Two other volunteers were Carl & Ricky Hardyman of Hardymon Hauling and Excavating and Alex Brause, a local farmer. Ricky and Carl did a lot of digging and found several gravestones buried in the ground.
On Sunday, we had the help of more volunteers. Diana Campbell of Bucyrus, JoAnne Brause Turner of Tallmadge, Ohio. Also, Dianne Brause, Dick Tribow (from Florida) and Allison and Alex Brause. Alex brought back some heavy equipment (a mini excavator) which made a big difference. He was able to get out a lot of the brush we couldn’t and carry away some logs to the brush pile we started. The brush pile was then set on fire. Attached are pictures from Sunday and how the cemetery looked when everyone left.
A big thanks to all those who came to help us clear out the Conley Cemetery. It was really overgrown and many of the stones were not visible. But thanks to everyone, we found most of the stones and a few that were not found originally. There were a few broken stones, tower stones were toppled over and some of the stones were mislocated. Thanks again for ALL who helped.
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