DAY 1, 11/22
Today marks one year since I rediscovered Corkery Cemetery and we began regular maintenance to keep the cemetery up.
Yesterday my daughter and I went down to do what I thought we be a fairly simple and straightforward task: divide the cemetery up into a grid and map each and every grave.
Mapping each grave was something that I had already done once before and attempted a second time until I realized it was just too difficult to keep track of the wandering rows and columns in the cemetery.
The first was the day after Thanksgiving 2017 when I had discovered the cemetery, and I mapped all 65 graves. All 65 that I found, anyway.
The only problem was that since then, as we have removed trees, branches, brush, and continued to keep up the mowing we keep discovering additional graves.
For each of the last three times we have visited we have found a new grave each time–including yesterday.
As best I can tell we are up to around 130 graves now.
First we placed 50 metal grave markers, then mapped all of the columns.
Anyway, our straightforward, easy day was anything but—after half a day and half the cemetery, we ran out of string and also needed food. I had honestly expected to have had plenty of string and expected to be totally done and on our way to Bennet Springs to hike the rest of the day away.
We headed into Lebanon, got lunch and a big skein of yarn—bigger than our previous roll of string. We ate in the car on the way back to the cemetery to save time.
It turns out we still should have gotten more string; our skein of yarn ran out, then I resorted to fluorescent tape I had brought just in case, and then we ran out of that as well.
We did get the vast majority of the graves labeled and photographed—but we still didn’t get done; we were shooting pictures right up to the last of the daylight.
In all we documented 103 graves, and I have updated my Excel spreadsheets as best I can, but it will take at least one more visit with at least two people to associate all of the grave ID’s with all of the plot coordinates, as well as marking and photographing the remaining ~11 graves.
Also, something I hadn’t thought of until just now: how the heck will I make this grid permanent in case we find more graves?
DAY 2, 11/24
The day after Thanksgiving was cold and rainy so we stayed inside. Saturday turned out to be nice again, so we set out back to Corkery to finish.
We got all the rest of the graves mapped and plotted, then we went through the whole cemetery, associating grave ID’s with plot ID’s. Now all the graves are mapped, identified, plotted, and photographed. We also sprayed some Wet & Forget on some of the stones that were the most affected by mold, lichen, and moss.
While we were working we found a few stones that will need to be repaired, so, we will add those to the work list.
