By Paige Gurgainers
Dorcheat Historical Museum Director Jessica Gorman gave the presentation for this month’s ‘Night at the Museum’ this past Monday evening, April 15. The topic of choice was ‘Preserving our Cemeteries,” something that Gorman is personally passionate about.
“One of my goals is to encourage people to get involved in preserving our cemeteries. Sharing my own experiences would be a good way to show that anybody can get involved and make a difference. You just have to decide that it is something you want to do and take action to do it,” said Gorman.
According to Gorman, community involvement is crucial. Modern monument companies can go out and reset a modern gravestone, but they lack the knowledge to care for historical markers. Donations are great, but only serve as a temporary fix.
She has had an interest in cemeteries since early in life – visiting graveyards and would see damage or deterioration on the gravestones and wanted to make a difference.
“I was a stay-at-home mom. In my spare time I pursued learning about cemetery preservation. In 2020, Covid came along, and everything pretty much came to a halt,” said Gorman. “Our schedule was suddenly clear, and I saw the perfect opportunity to do extra things like working in the cemetery.”
She contacted Shelley Francis, past director of the museum, about removing dirt and grass to prevent gravestones from being entirely covered and lost.
“The more we worked the more I really wanted to try to make as big of a difference as I could,” said Gorman. “That summer we started cleaning headstones. We continued until all the local gravestones had been cleaned.”
She has now cleaned gravestones in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Illinois with intentions to take a trip in the near future to Tennessee.
In April of 2021, Gorman was able to attend two workshops to extend her knowledge on cemetery preservation. The first workshop took place at the old Homer Cemetery where they focused on cleaning headstones. The second workshop was conducted by Atlas Preservation as a part of their 48 State Tour event.
Following those training sessions, in the late fall of 2022, Gorman was able to clean and repair the Loye family plot. Loye was a prominently known citizen of the Minden community. This plot includes Loye’s wife and their seven children, none of which lived past the age of 9. In this particular case, Gorman emphasized the need for community involvement in the care of headstones due to there being no descendants to tend to them.
“I have made some attempts to try and get people involved. That is the goal is to get people to realize that the only way we can do things like this is to decide we are going to do it, educate ourselves and get out there and do the work,” said Gorman.
She explained the needs of each of the cemeteries here in Minden beginning with the Fuller- Murrell Cemetery. “The Murrells were among the earliest settlers in this part of the state,” said Gorman. “The cemetery is not owned or maintained by the city. The primary need is regular maintenance in the form of mowing.”
In the case of the Minden Cemetery, which serves as the burial place for many of the people who helped to establish and develop Minden, similar things are needed but it is difficult to accomplish those things due to the size. “There is a cemetery association, but this cemetery is extremely large. There are over 4,000 people buried here,” said Gorman.
Although Gorman cannot train anyone to repair headstones, she encourages those that are interested to educate themselves and attend a class. Another 48 State Tour will be taking class on June 17 in Natchitoches at Jackson Square Cemetery where attendees will have the opportunity to learn and get hands-on experience from a trained professional.