Cleaning Headstone

[Music] today we're at the stockdale parker cemetery at the skull buses property near stamping ground today i'm going to show you how to properly clean headstone there's a proper way and an improper way if you do it improperly you can actually damage the stone so we don't want to do that here here's a stone that i cleaned maybe a couple weeks ago and here's a stone that has not been cleaned so you can see the difference so i'm going to show you how to clean a headstone so it looks like this to properly clean a headstone you need some equipment and here i have before you all the equipment that i use to properly clean a headstone first of all you have to use a lot of water because one of the things you don't want to do is harm the headstone when you clean the headstone do no harm that should be constantly in your head do no harm and even though these stones are very durable and heavy uh they can be damaged by certain chemicals that you might think would be okay so one of the things you have to have is plenty of water i've got jugs full of water here and i've got a sprayer here with two gallons of water you can also use some soap but you have to have a special type of soap to clean these headstones the soap has to be ph neutral it cannot be acidic and it cannot be alkaline and there are some places where you can get this this ph neutral soap if you want to know the brand that i use just call me at the library and i'll let you know there's something else that you can use on the headstones you'll notice that the headstone over here the one that i'll be showing you how to clean it has some green stuff on it it looks like algae or moss or something like that there is a spray a biocide that's very good at keeping that off the headstone and it's safe for the headstone the national park service has been using it for decades they use it at arlington cemetery so one thing i want to warn you about i've said cause no harm do not use bleach and do not use ammonia on these headstones because bleach and ammonia will damage the headstones you might not see the damage right away but it will definitely damage the headstone so water ph neutral soap and a biocide that's designed for headstones you'll see also i have brushes here we'll need that to clean this headstone these are natural brushes well one's a natural brush and one's nylon you never want to use metal anything metal on a headstone so a natural brush or soft nylon uh for those tight spaces i've got this it looks like a toothbrush that that is a natural or nylon bristle to get uh do some heavy duty scraping i've got these scrapers here these get at paint stores and things like that but to get the stuff off the headstones you want to either use plastic like this or maybe some wood maybe those uh wooden stirrers that you get at paint stores but never use metal on a headstone it'll scratch and damage the headstone and of course work gloves so let's get to it first thing you want to do to properly clean a headstone is just use your your brush whether it's natural bristle or nylon so it always has to be soft and just lightly brush the headstone like this get any dirt or debris off next thing you want to do as i mentioned before you want to use a lot of water on the headstone so the first thing you want to do after you brush it get your sprayer out and just spray it down you'll be using a lot of water when you're cleaning a headstone make sure you bring a lot i've got uh this is two gallons and i brought two gallons of water over there now we're out in the woods so we don't have a spigot or anything like that so you have to bring your own water if you're at a a city cemetery a lot of times they have water there for you in this case this is what i have to do now i've thoroughly wetted this headstone next thing i'm going to do use the plastic spatula and then try to get this stuff off yeah it's come right off again never use metal use plastic or wood to get this stuff off it's coming right off by the way this is hezekiah office headstone he died in 1856 this is the oldest headstone here at stockdale parker cemetery skull busters he died like i said in 1856 he was in the kentucky infantry he married elizabeth and he died first in 1856 after he died she married mr stockdale mr stockdale's buried over there and elizabeth is buried next to him her headstone is in shambles right now someday we'll get that fixed this appears to be granite you know some headstones are marble but believe it or not as hard as marble is uh it can it can deteriorate because of acid rain stuff like that granite it's a much better material it's more durable okay i think i got there's some like in here on the back get that off again never use metal on headstones wood or plastic okay enough of that now again more water spray it down a little bit and what i'm going to do i'm going to use a brush and that neutral soap solution i've got it here in a spray bottle i mixed it up at home and what you want to do you want to work from bottom to top that's to prevent streaking or at least minimize streaking [Music] it's starting to come off [Music] all right you'll notice that some of these stains are pretty tough so what i'm going to do i'm going to use more of the soap i was telling you about the ph neutral soap i'm going to put it directly on the brush and we'll see what works here rinse it [Music] it's not going to be perfect but we do the best we can causing no harm [Music] time to pull out [Music] well it's a little bit better but that's probably the best we can do without damaging the headstone you always want to be gentle with the stone uh one last thing i mentioned to you the biocide that i use on this this will kill any remaining living organisms on the headstone and also prevent any more growth at least for quite a while so let me get the side for you and if you want to know what kind of biopsied i'm using just call me at the library and i'll let you know it's the one that's used like i said by the national park service and just lightly spray it while the headstone is still wet and that's it we'll come back a little bit later and see what it looks like after it's dried hello again uh we're still here at stockdale parker cemetery at the skull busted property near stamping ground we just got through cleaning the headstone and now i want to show you something else this is a bonus feature this is one of the headstones another headstone here at this cemetery is the parker headstone and you'll notice it's a husband-wife headstone you have mary over here it has her birthdate and it has her death date however her husband malayas doesn't have the birth date or the death date it's unknown unknown so when i see something like that i'm a little bit saddened and you would think that they would at least have the death date i can understand why they might not have the birthday because back then birthdays weren't that important or uh they didn't keep good records but the death day you think they'd be a little bit better than that so anyway i started doing some research i wanted to find the birth date and the death date and sure enough i did find them now how did i find the birthday i went through the scott county library website and we have access to ancestry.com i plugged in his name and i found a federal census and from that i found out his birthday which is 1834. okay so but i couldn't find his death date through ancestry or from ending the records in ancestry so i dug a little deeper now through our website scott cotton public library we have digitized the local newspaper going back to at least the 1860s and coming all the way back so far to 1966 so i thought this might be worth a shot so i went to the the website it went to the digitized newspapers georgetown times i think it was called back then and in the search box i put in menelaus parker's name lo and behold there were all these entries for his name the last entry march 1909 so we have discovered his birth date and his death date ancestry.com and uh digitized newspapers scott county public library website really helped out so this was very satisfying for me and i hope it's a lesson for you when you're doing research in genealogy you

Channel: Scott County Public Library

Views: 14,617

Keywords: Cleaning Headstones, washing headstones, maintaining headstones, headstone maintenance, Scott County Public Library

Id: jAZsj0ps0hU

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020