RM Jones’ Adventure

Thanks for stopping back to visit. As you remember, in part one we discussed some of the problems in indexing a cemetery. In part two we talked about the process I actually went through while indexing the Glendale Cemetery in Le Claire, Iowa. Now in this part I’ll tell you the process we went through to clean and photograph the headstones and monuments and check my data file.

First let me tell you something my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife found very funny. I am one of those rather impatient (some would say obnoxious) people that wants things done my way and fast. Sometimes I create BIG problems for myself when I let this poor behavior flaw come to the front without thinking about the consequences. The first day out to take photos we were trying to develop a system that would speed things up so we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives out there. Let me tell you, at that time that cemetery looked awfully big. Anyway, things weren’t going like I wanted them to. We tried a lot of different systems but nothing seemed to be as fast as I wanted it to be. I THOUGHT I could probably do it as least as fast by myself, so why have my wife spend her time out there to. The problem is my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife likes to help whenever she can. I had to convince her that I didn’t really NEED her to spend her days in the cemetery with me.

After a couple of hours we went back to the house, which is only about 12 blocks away, to get something to eat and drink. It was really hot that day. While there I convinced her she was probably just wasting her time and could do more productive things at home in a much cooler place. She finally agreed and off I went. BIG MISTAKE. About then I started finding headstones that needed a lot of cleaning before the photo could be taken. I had to lay the camera, clipboard and a couple of other things down, get the brush out and clean the stone. This usually required me to get down on the ground and crawl around to get at the stone. Get up and put the brush back in my pocket, bend over to get the camera and clipboard. Then take the photo, go to the next headstone and start all over again. Up and down and up and down … Boy I wish my Beautiful and ALWAYS Charming wife was back with me now. That night I kind of hinted that I sure had a workout today and sure missssssed her. The next morning there she was getting ready to go help. LOVE THAT GAL. Of course I had to eat a little crow for a day or two but that’s OK, she was there to help.

Cleaning the headstones was the hard part. My Lovely wife did most of that. She would work hard and get far enough ahead of me that I never had to slow down for her. Thank You Darling. At that time she was using a soft bristle “whisk” broom like you use to sweep a car floor with. She was doing it dry and it was very difficult to get the stones clean. After a short while we discovered that two brooms and a milk container full of water worked the best. She would remove most of the loose dirt, moss and other junk with a dry broom and then use the wet broom to clean the stone. This seems to work the best. About then we also found that the water made a BIG difference on the photos of some of the stones. The smooth surface marble stones with the letters removed were often hard to photo because of glare off the smooth polished surface. When you get them wet the letters really show up very well as does all the beautiful designs etched in the surface. The sandstone stones also showed a big difference when they were wet. It was such an improvement I started carrying a jug of water and broom with me just to wet the surface if I was having problems getting a good photo.

So, my wife was out in front of me cleaning stones. Let me say here, that is a tough job. Not only did she have to get up and down continually, but it was really hard on her shoulders and back. The motion to clean the stones really caused her some problems. After many chiropractor appointments she’s OK now but it was tough on her. I am going to have to find an easier way to do it this year. I have been told that there is a spray can of something that is made just to clean headstones with. I haven’t googled it yet but I will. Have you heard of anything like that? If you have will you please leave a comment and tell me what it is and where I can find it. Have to save my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife as much work as I can this year or I may find myself doing it alone again. Perish the thought.

On with the story. My wife has cleaned the stone so I have the easy part. I’m using a Canon eos Digital Rebel XTi camera and it takes very high resolution photos. To show you just how good the photos are you can see one here. All I had to do was to compare the information on the headstone to my data printout, take the photos and record the numbers so I could match the photos with the correct name later. In many cases I would think the headstone or monument may be a little hard to read because of wear, glare or poor lighting so I would take a number of shots from different angles. Sometimes the angle of the photo makes a big difference in what detail you can see. After I got home I didn’t do any photo editing on the photos except to rotate them to get the right side up when I had held the camera on it’s side. I feel this gives the people that want to download it the best thing to work with if they want to enhance it with their software.

Let me say so there is no doubt in anyone’s mind; The photographs of the headstones and monuments are not copyrighted. You can use them in your records or on your website as you see fit. If you use them on a website or for any commercial purpose I would appreciate it if you would give me credit for the photo and link them to my site at http://www.rm-jones.com .

That’s about it. I have uploaded the photos to my website at http://www.rm-jones.com and linked the data file record to them to make it easy to locate photos of the headstones. Actually, at this time all of them aren’t there yet. I’m working on it and try to add some every few days. It shouldn’t take to long to get them all up, but there are a lot of them. Including all four (and half of another) cemeteries we did last year I took about 5,500 photos. That’s a lot of photos to link to.

In the next post I’ll talk about the other “Old” cemeteries we did and that should end the series. I hope you find this interesting. If you do (and even if you don’t), how about leaving me a comment and letting me know.

Have a Great Day and I’ll be back in a day or two.

Bob Jones