Genealogical Society unearths buried tombstones in Windsor Grove Cemetery

Article content

What’s in a name? For a local group of devotees of ancestry willing to get dirty and dirty to uncover family stories, the names reveal the stories of Windsor.

Article content

For the past four to five decades, the Essex County branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society has been on a mission to document and digitize names and dates on grave markers in Windsor-Essex. In recent years, however, they have discovered buried tombstones in Windsor Grove Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in the city, prompting the addition of shovels and shovels to their quest for knowledge.

It’s interesting, the things we find

Pulling a child’s cart filled with buckets, scrub brushes, monument-safe soaps, and a small high-pressure water sprayer, a handful of members carefully walk among the graves, each looking at the stones and soil around them in looking for clues that may lead to hidden information. They look for large patches of grass without headstones where the squat grave markers have probably sunk into the ground and been buried. They also look for monuments that appear to be missing tall pillars, which may have fallen and been left to slowly descend underground.

Article content

When they find a promising spot, they use a thin, pointed stick with a handled top to stab into the grass until they hit something hard. Then the excavation begins.

“We’re trying to salvage what we can on family history,” David Hutchinson, a member of the Genealogical Society, told the Star.

Some of the cemetery records were lost in a fire long ago, he said. None of the hidden graves his group has found by pricking the ground were in the archive before they came to unearth them.

“For us, it’s fun. But as we go ahead and dig one up, we get the names and the information so we can add it to the databases. “

Earlier this week, the group unearthed two pillars that had fallen from large monuments installed in 1869, three years after Windsor Grove Cemetery was established. The monuments went to John Furzer Elliot and Josiah Strong, two “prominent and wealthy” men in Canada in the mid-1800s, according to documents from the Essex Historical Society. The monuments also listed the names of some members of each family.

Article content

When the rain-soaked soil dries up, representatives from Hallmark Memorial Co., a memorial business in Oldcastle, will use heavy machinery to lift and restore the pillars in their proper places.

When they are not digging in the cemetery, the genealogical society cleans up grave markers that are above ground but difficult to read. They use a mild soap for washing horses, as dish soap can damage old stones. For the lichen covered gravestones, they use a special biodegradable cleaner called D / 2.

Every time they reveal a new name, they take a photo and write it down.

“These guys have been doing a fantastic job,” said Ed Shabsove, general manager of the cemetery, who noted how well the genealogical society has been able to clean some previously illegible headstones.

Article content

About four to five years ago, Shabsove regularly received complaints about the condition of the Windsor Grove Cemetery, which had leaning headstones, overgrown trees and dilapidated infrastructure, and desperately needed attention. Thousands of people are buried there, including Windsor’s first mayor, Samuel Smith MacDonell, Gordon McGregor, who helped establish Ford of Canada, union leader Charlie Brooks, and dozens of WWI veterans, to name a few.

With Windsor Grove at full capacity and without a source of income, Windsor Memorial Gardens, the nonprofit that also cares for the 155-year-old cemetery, has been supporting its maintenance. In the last three years or so, Shabsove said they have devoted a significant amount of resources to transforming the cemetery into a beauty. They have straightened between 300 and 500 monuments each year, a labor intensive job.

Article content

“We are trying to make it look fantastic,” Shabsove said. “The transformation that we are doing is showing and honestly, we are getting a lot of praise from people.”

The local genealogical society branch has been “a great help” in making that change happen, he said. In the next year or two, Shabsove hopes to establish historical tours of the cemetery, showcasing the stories of those buried there.

“Almost everyone knows someone who is buried there. I’m very happy where he has gone. “

Article content

Pat Clancy, a counselor for the genealogical society, said what her group does helps those who research their own family tree.

“You know other people are doing the same in other places, it’s a great community,” he said. “It’s interesting, the things we found.”

To date, the Essex County branch of the Genealogical Society has transcribed information from some 20,000 headstones across the region. Since they began searching for buried grave markers in Windsor Grove three years ago, they have discovered about five each week during the summer and early fall.

“It’s endless,” Clancy said.

[email protected]

twitter.com/wstarcampbell