Cleaning tombstones at the Old Pioneer Cemetery, Taylorsville, KY

 The tombstones of Samuel T. Gilbert (my 2 GGrandfather) and Susan W. Gilbert (his 3rd wife, not my ancestor) are covered with moss and lichen and show signs of significant deterioration since I was there in 2015.






So I determined to go back before we left KY and see if I could clean them a bit as well as find the stone of Nancy Jane Gilbert. We visited the Taylorsville hardware store and bought a bucket, some brushes and some plastic scrapers. We bought bottled water from the Dollar store.


Three gallons of water later, and a lot of scraping and brushing the stones look better.


The black spots are very hard and we couldn't remove with water


Happy to see them looking better although more work is required. Next time I will go prepared with better tools and additional knowledge about how to clean these stones. I believe the headstones are marble but the bases are something else, perhaps granite?

This is the inscription on the back of Samuel T.'s stone and is probably the monument company that made the stone. With some research and a little bit of luck, I maybe able to find records for their business, or at least find out the types of stones they used during this era.

Cleaning the stone of Samuel A. Gilbert (5 year old boy) that we found laying face down in the dirt did not make as much difference. Actually being face down protected the stone to some extent but pieces are broken off and crumbling.

Notice the impression in the dirt
We found a few more of the broken pieces laying nearby





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