I’ve always believed that cemeteries are storybooks of the past, offering up nuggets of history that you can’t find elsewhere. But like any historical gem, they lose their luster as time passes. Weeds overtake headstones, brambles deter visitors, and the elements topple existing monuments.
As a cemetery preservationist, this is a scene I’d viewed dozens of time. Each time, the loss and destruction of history is disheartening, so I would immediately contact local organizations who can help preserve and maintain historic burial grounds once again. However, when I found out that my family was buried in an abandoned, deteriorating cemetery, it became even more personal.
So you can fully understand the story of Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery, let’s flip the calendar back to 2017.
Another Civil War soldier grandfather! I was excited to find a pension record verifying that Finis Taylor Shelton served in the 43rd Illinois Infantry during the Civil War, making him the fourth Civil War-serving grandfather I’d discovered (Today, there are eleven!). After a bit more research, I discovered that Finis and his wife–my grandmother–Eliza Clare Shelton were buried in a cemetery I hadn’t heard of before, but in an area I was familiar with.
On Find A Grave, I scoured the online cemetery, noting that Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery, Finis and Eliza’s final resting place, is a family burial ground full of relatives, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and another grandfather (Finis’s father), William S. Shelton. But the photos turned elation to heartbreak.
Like so many other cemeteries I’d recently seen, Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery lay in neglect. Only Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery was in even worse condition than many. As a cow pasture for years, maybe even decades, stones lay toppled over. Others were broken. Many were missing. Upon an in-person visit to the grounds, I found the entire cemetery overtaken by high vegetation, as the photo at the top of this page attests.
After wading through the tall grasses, I discovered the broken grave marker belonging to my grandfather William S. Shelton. Poking around a bit more, Finis and Eliza’s foot markers were found, bearing no more information other than “FTS” and “ECS,” their initials. That day, I walked away from the cemetery dejected. William’s grave marker had to be repaired, while Finis and Eliza’s just needed to be found, if it even existed any longer. Even so, any restoration work would be impossible with the cemetery in such disrepair. As the New Year dawned, I was determined that Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery’s neglect would finally end.
In 2018, my family and I began efforts to mow the cemetery. While mowing might not normally be considered a “hard job,” the cemetery’s thick vegetation was difficult to wade through, let alone cut through. After we cleaned up the cemetery’s grounds a bit by chopping down weeds and brambles, we decided that there was only one way to keep the cows out permanently: install a fence.
So we did just that. Between juggling work, school, and everyday life, we loaded up the family and headed to Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery to complete fence work. We set posts, strung barbed wire, and installed a gate. By the end of 2018, Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery was still in rough shape. But it was getting better.
As a former cow lot, the weeds grew quickly in 2019, but we still managed the cemetery as best we could. Unlike lawn maintenance companies that boast big crews and ample equipment, we were preserving Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery through determination and a push mower.
In 2020, even though the world “paused” because of the pandemic, my family and I forged ahead with our cemetery work. That year, we were able to see a large difference in the cemetery. Instead of the picture at the top of this page, we managed to transform it into the cemetery you can see below. Unfortunately, a tree was still toppled in the cemetery. Somewhere along the way, the donated sign had fallen from the fence and been trampled by cows. Once a proud indicator that restoration work was happening, the cemetery’s sign became a reminder of all we were contending with. And all the work that lay ahead.
For the 2021 and 2022 maintenance year, I received exciting news. I’d been working with local officials pre-Covid to clear out select cemeteries throughout my county. Sadly, the pandemic halted cemetery preservation efforts, as it was too dangerous to have crews working in close proximity. Even so, by 2021 my county’s local detention center would once again send out crews to cemeteries, and one of the cemeteries receiving routine maintenance this time was Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery (see photo below). In 2022, Gabriel N. Shelton became one of forty cemeteries that was preserved in my community.
The work of the local detention center at Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery in 2022 had a huge impact. With large crews and more equipment, they were able to get the grounds of Gabriel N. Shelton Cemetery back in tip-top shape. They removed the fallen tree and cleared out all the brambles and vegetation.
This left a clear path for my family to work on completing preservation work by replacing broken stones and working to find grave markers that had been buried beneath the sod after years of cows pushing and kicking the headstones. In February 2023, we got to work. But the headstones of my grandparents, Finis and Eliza Shelton, had still not been found…
Stay tuned for part 2, releasing April 2023.
