Jan 19

What’s up next for Corkery Cemetery?

Mostly administrative stuff.

First, maintenance will resume once the weather clears.

Second, I am looking into getting a 501(c)13 setup, which is an IRS-recognized non-profit cemetery association. Obviously we don’t charge for our labor, but maintenance on the cemetery cost me $279 last year, with roughly a third of that being gasoline, a third being meals, and a third being materials (string, flags, grave markers, etc). I don’t have the estimates for what costs my brother and our friend Dave incurred.

I purchased a chainsaw and a weed eater for maintaining the cemetery in 2018 as well, but I did not factor in the cost of equipment purchased since I get to own the equipment.

I am guessing that setting up the 501(3)13 will probably cost a few hundred dollars, but I don’t have a real estimate. In order to comply with IRS guidelines for non-profits (as I understand it) we will need to elect officers, hold periodic meetings, and keep records. It sounds like kind of a pain, but I think this is what will be necessary for us to keep the cemetery preserved and maintained after we (the current maintainers) are no longer able to take care of it.

Third, I have been researching cemetery management software for almost a year. Most software packages are fairly expensive. At least I assume so by the fact that most vendors won’t tell you how much the software actually costs–you have to contact them for a quote. I have found a plugin for WordPress (the blogging platform for this website) and it is only around $100, and it looks fairly promising.

Fourth, I would like to get decent aerial shots of the cemetery to assist with the mapping layout. I have been pricing new and used camera drones for a while, but I hate to buy something that I won’t really have much use for once I have the shots. If you know someone with a drone that has a high-res camera that would like to take the shots for us, pleas let me know.

Fifth, and maybe the easiest item on the list, I want to get a sign made to affix to the fence.

Finally, and this is more of a wish-list item than a total necessity, I would like to get a ground-penetrating-radar scan of the cemetery. The fact is we honestly don’t know how many bodies are buried and exactly where, and it would be nice to know for sure.

Nov 30

Maintenance 2018/11/22 and 2018/11/24

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.

Oct 19

Maintenance 2018/10/13

This past weekend Josh, I, and my daughter Elsa headed down to do the monthly maintenance.

We chainsawed out the lowest-hanging branches, and Josh and his kids hauled off the brush.

Elsa personally tackled thinning out all of the dead and overgrown branches from the tree in the downhill corner of the cemetery:

Here is the freshly pruned tree. Hopefully this will allow more sun to get to the healthy and struggling branches so we don’t have to lop any more off.

We tested out some cleaner that is supposed to get rid of mold, mildew, moss, and lichen without attacking the headstones. It’s slow acting, so I will check on it next time we head down.

And we found yet another gravestone:

We also put down some new stakes to mark the graves. These will take the place of the little flags that we have been temporarily using to mark them with. These new stakes are more attractive and more durable against the weedeater. Eventually we will have the plot numbers on them.

Unfortunately, they are also more expensive 😐 

I was hoping to finishing mapping all the graves, but the photo capabilities of my drone are pretty lame, besides the fact I don’t really know the best way to spatially map out such an irregularly laid out piece of ground.

Here is where my drone almost went in the drink:

I did some research into how much it would cost to find all the graves in the cemetery with Ground Penetrating Radar. The quick answer is ‘a lot’, but I have reached out to a Missouri company for an actual quote.

And here is a nice picture of some moss.

Oct 05

Matthew Joseph Wilson

Matthew Joseph Wilson was a Vietnam War era veteran. He is buried under the yucca in the northwest corner of the cemetery.

This headstone was only recently found–one of his relatives had cleared all the dirt off of it and planted the flag for Memorial Day 2018.

 

Oct 05

List of Families

Here is the list of the families represented in the Corkery Cemetery (as of October 2018):

  • Bradshaw
  • Guthrie
  • Jones
  • McCall
  • Peoples
  • Poynter
  • Shadrick
  • Wilson

Oct 05

Maintenance 2018/09/22

I finally got the headstone for Preston Bradshaw repaired. I scrubbed out all of the moss that was growing in where the stone had cracked, and then epoxied the stone together and ratchet strapped it while it cured. Unfortunately while the stone is glued back together, there is still a large crack that could allow moisture to penetrate and expand. I struggle with knowing just how much to do to preserve and maintain vs. how much is too much and really alters the original stone. Next I did the regular mowing, which wasn’t too bad; the weeds were only about seven or eight inches high. Finally, I remapped about two thirds of the cemetery, getting to the first 57 graves. I plan to get to the remaining 30ish graves in a couple of weeks. If I can figure out how to post the spreadsheets with the grave info, I will hopefully get that done soon as well.  

Aug 28

Maintenance 2018/08/25

It’s been a while. Saturday me, my brother Josh, and our friend Dave went down to do the monthly maintenance. I wasn’t able to make it down in July, but Josh had gone down and took care of it, as well as placing a cross in the cemetery .

When we showed up Saturday we were pleasantly surprised that the cemetery was just a wee bit shaggy–not even what you would call overgrown. Between the three of us we knocked out all of the mowing and trimming in under 30 minutes.

Jun 24

Maintenance 2018/06/16

Just a short update. Me, my brother, and his friend went down last week and mowed again. Fortunately, the weeds were only a foot tall this time and we were done in just under an hour.

Sometime you wonder if your labor really benefits anyone else, so it was nice to see that a member of the Wilson family had showed up to place flags on the veterans’ graves–and also uncovered the grave of Matthew Wilson, a Vietnam vet who had been buried there in 2005. I had known about this grave from findagrave.com, but had never found it. As far as I know he is the last person buried in the Corkery/Guthrie cemetery.

They also (or someone else) placed a flag on the grave of our great-great-great grandfather, William, who was a veteran of the Union forces in the Civil War, as was his son Thomas, who is buried in Arkansas.

I am working on some sort of work ticket system for non-routine maintenance. On the list so far:

  1. Repair the split headstone of Preston Bradshaw.
  2. Make headstones for Thomas and Homer Poynter (graves currently marked by stones)

May 26

Maintenance 2018/05/19

I went down last weekend with the intent of doing some light trimming, trying to get the cemetery spiffed up in time for Memorial Day.  However, the weeds grew pretty quickly since my previous visit:

My great grandparents’ grave right inside the cemetery was barely visible, as were the tallest tombstones.

 

Here are a couple of shots after weed eating maybe a third of it.

Here is one of the two tortoises I saved:

And here is the finished cemetery. Not what I wanted for Memorial Day really, but at least the weeds are down again. The weeds around the graves remain because I ran the weedeater dry and the mower almost dry. I hope to be down again in a couple of weeks. 

Mar 30

Maintenance: 2018/03/24

I went down last weekend and did some weedeating, cleaned up a little brush, and righted Alfred and Florence’s tombstone. I also found another 1-2 graves that were buried under some of the dead grass.

Next visit will be more mowing, which should be easier now that we have (hopefully) all the hard-to-see graves marked with flags.