Southampton Historical Museum Works To Restore Local Cemeteries

While many people pore over textbooks and artifacts to learn about the history of Southampton Town, local historian Tom Edmonds believes there are still countless stories left untold that deserve attention.

Mr. Edmonds, the director at the Southampton Historical Museum, is referring to tales that have been quietly kept in the soil at the slowly deteriorating cemeteries throughout Southampton Town, which the museum hopes to bring back to life in the next few years. Walking among the rows of dirty, cracked, and often displaced headstones at cemeteries in Southampton, Mr. Edmonds can easily be sidetracked while reading inscriptions identifying deceased from siblings buried together after dying just months apart, to a Revolutionary War hero adorned with a Daughters of the American Revolution talisman.

Next month, the historical museum will host a two-day restoration workshop at one of the cemeteries, while at least one volunteer slowly makes his way through another to preserve the unique insights they provide.

“This is the place to go to find stories about people who lived here that you won’t find any place else,” Mr. Edmonds said last week in a small cemetery off Windmill Lane. “You can find some tragedies here with the state of some of these tombstones falling apart, there are stories here.”

That is why the historical museum has teamed up with Southampton Town to preserve as many as possible. On October 3 and 4, the museum will host a workshop at 205 Little Plains Road from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at which volunteers will be put to work restoring, cleaning and mending tombstones at the Old Southampton Burying Ground.

Meanwhile, Dennis Delaney, a volunteer at the museum, last spring launched a five-year initiative at another Southampton cemetery on Windmill Lane. Whenever the weather permits, Mr. Delaney has been going through the 600-plot graveyard and sprucing it up. To date, he has restored roughly 60 headstones, often finding pieces in adjacent shrubbery. Mr. Delaney starts by cleaning them to remove decades of dirt and grime mixed with salt air and acid rain. From there, he uses epoxy to meld the pieces back together, then he leaves them clamped together overnight while they set.

“He is working his way down the rows,” Mr. Edmonds said. “This history is evaporating, or it would be without people like Dennis who are putting them back together and cleaning them. It is amazing.”

Mr. Delaney said he first got involved in restoring cemeteries several years ago while walking in Hampton Bays. At the time, he came across several dismantled headstones, and quietly began restoring them as best he could. A few months later, he came across a group of volunteers working in North Sea, and they joined forces to learn better techniques.

“I had discovered a cemetery that was receiving very little attention and I thought it would be nice to be able to do some work on them,” Mr. Delaney said.

Last week, Mr. Edmonds said the historical museum was doing whatever was necessary to help Mr. Delaney by giving him access to a numerical system developed by the DAR in the 1920s to organize the plots. Once Mr. Delaney finds a missing headstone piece, he is able to use the registry—which lists names, dates and epitaphs inscribed on the stones—to determine where the piece belongs.

“We are trying to match up the names with the numbers and that is how we are helping Dennis,” Mr. Edmonds said. “This is a collaborative effort between us, the town, and volunteers.”

The free cemetery workshop is open to the public, and anyone looking for more information should contact Mr. Edmonds at the historical museum via email at tedmonds@southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org, or by calling 287-5740.