Halloween pranksters have vandalized several gravestones in one of the older cemeteries in my town. The damaged headstones dated back to the early 1800’s. This destruction of resources will make it more difficult for genealogists to find the information they are looking for.
Gravestones hold a lot of valuable information for genealogists. The stones usually say the full name, birth date and death date of the deceased person. It may include inscriptions that indicate that the person was married, or was a parent. The grave might be located near the person’s relatives, which makes it easier for genealogists to gather information about a particular part of their family tree.
I read an article in my local newspaper that said that vandals have damaged several headstones in the San Luis Cemetery, in San Luis Obispo, California. Right now, police believe this was the result of some kind of Halloween related prank.
The vandals broke several headstones “into a number of pieces”. Several others had been knocked over, (but were otherwise undamaged). The stones dated as far back as the 1800’s, and ranged to dating to the early 1900’s. The cost of the damages has been estimated to around $20,000.
This type of destruction brings problems for genealogists. Typically, grave sites from that time period have a limited amount of records kept on them. Police will try and locate the family members of the of the deceased persons whose gravestones were damaged, but this will be a difficult task.
Gravestones from the 1800’s were usually made from sandstone. This is a stone that is easy to carve into, and that will stand up to a certain amount of weathering, (for a while). Many of the stones from the 1800’s have experienced weather damage from all those years of exposure between when they were carved, and today.
Large flakes may fall off of the headstone, but, the inscriptions are usually still somewhat legible for around 100 years or so (depending on the climate that the stone was sitting in). This is why it is so important for genealogists to be careful when they are working with old gravestones.
The Halloween pranksters that broke the old headstones have done much more damage than what physically happened to the actual stones. They may have destroyed the only record of information about the people who were interred beneath those stones. One can almost hear the lamentations of the future genealogists whose research leads them to what is now a “brick wall”.
Image by Jo Naylor on Flickr