Headstone cleaning for the 2023 season has concluded at Oak Hill Cemetery. The Oak Hill Cemetery Committee of Watkins Museum of History is thankful for the assistance of dedicated volunteers and committee members who cleaned 593 headstones over the course of several months! Our total volunteer hours tallied were well over 200 hours.

Monthly cleaning seasons kicked off in March. However, temperatures were too low for the cleaning solutions to be effective. Instead the committee held a general clean up that day and filled 24 bags of leaves and branches. In an incredibly dry year, July was the only scheduled cleaning session that was rained out. During October, the committee held three cleaning sessions to get as many headstones cleaned before the season ended.

The committee is incredibly grateful to Prosoco, a local specialty construction chemicals manufacturer, for their generous donation of biological cleaning products and technical consultations. 

Also, a big thank you to Natalie Vondrak, Communications and Outreach Manager at Watkins Museum of History, who notified interested volunteers of cleaning opportunities and kept our social media and website presence updated and engaging.

The Oak Hill Cemetery Committee was pleased that the Lawrence Preservation Alliance recognized the OHCC cleaning project with a “Good Works: Preservation in Progress” award.