.jpg)
In celebration of National Preservation Month, Historic Lexington Foundation is sponsoring a cemetery conservation workshop.
The event will take place at Falling Spring Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 6, beginning at 2 p.m. The church is located on Falling Spring Road off U.S. 11 South at Fancy Hill. HLF encourages churches and families that maintain historic cemeteries in Rockbridge County to attend.
Participating in the workshop will be two conservators specializing in cemetery conservation from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Richmond, Katherine Ridgway and Joanna Wilson Green. Both participated in a similar workshop hosted by HLF in May 2018 at Lexington Presbyterian Church. Also presenting at the workshop will be Alison Bell, professor of anthropology at Washington and Lee University. She is the author of the recently published “The Vital Dead: Making Meaning, Identity and Community through Cemeteries.”
Ridgway and Wilson will speak to the best practices for cleaning, repairing and resetting of gravestones. Their work has taken them to historic cemeteries throughout Virginia working with professionals and the public to promote the preservation of the state’s cultural heritage.
Prior to joining VDHR in 2013, Ridgway worked six and one-half years as a fine and decorative arts conservator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Green is an archaeologist and cemetery expert with over 25 years in the documentation, preservation and archaeological excavation of historic cemeteries. Her research interests include the evolution of funerary iconography and folk burial customs in the Mid-Atlantic.
Bell is a 1991 graduate of W&L with majors in English and anthropology/archaeology. She received a master’s in anthropology from the University of California at Berkley and her doctorate from the University of Virginia. She worked with noted archaeologist Jim Deetz at both the University of Virginia and Berkley. She will speak to chapters in her new book focusing on symbols on gravestones and in cemeteries and the communication qualities of the stones between the living and the dead. She has visited over 140 cemeteries in the Valley of Virginia north to Winchester.
Also participating in the workshop will be Shawn Hamric of Hamric Memorials in Lexington. With HLF funding, Hamric recently undertook restoration work on seven significant gravestones at Falling Spring Cemetery and prior to that at Oak Grove and Evergreen Cemetery in Lexington.
The workshop will conclude with a tour of Falling Spring Cemetery during which Hamric will point out the restoration work done there.
