Bear Creek Cemetery - Collin County, Texas

Established 1873

Gravestone Restoration Workshop - April 29, 2011

In 2011 the Collin County Historical Commission chose Bear Creek Cemetery as one of two places to hold a day-long workshop on Gravestone Restoration, led by Jonathan Appell. This was a hands-on workshop, and Jon not only told us how, he demonstrated cleaning, leveling, and repairing three badly damaged markers. The following topics were covered:

• Basic geology relating to gravestones and monuments
• Typical gravestone and monument styles and common problems associated with them
• How to clean marble, brownstone, granite and masonry
• Raising, re-leveling and re-setting gravestones
• How to repair fallen gravestones
• Creating a cast socket base, and resetting a gravestone broken at the ground level
• Repairing fractured gravestones and monuments
• Stone Epoxies, pros and cons and proper mixing and application
• Mortars, a brief historic overview, lime & NHL mortars, problems with Portland cement
• Introduction to Infilling, creating mortars, color matching and application

The workshop was very well-attended, and we are very pleased with the results!

The next day the workshop was held at Snow Hill Cemetery, north of Farmersville.

There is an article with pictures here, prepared by Candace Fountoulakis. Candace is very involved in the care of Young Cemetery, also in Collin County.

Learning about various materials and styles of gravestones.
Using a mirror to make invisible markings readable. Cleaning stone with D2
Using a homemade tripod to easily lift very heavy stones.
Tilted 3-piece stone repaired and levelled. Upright stone re-united with its base, and base levelled and repaired.