Connecticut Gravestone Network: Working to save Connecticut’s History

It’s a matter of respect!

CGN is holding a meeting on Saturday, March 11th 2023 at the Bristol Public Library from 10 am to 3pm.

No charge – Coffee, drinks, snacks & donuts provided.

You are welcome to bring your own lunch for our break.

This is our first meet up of the new year. Our goal is to have a venue to open up conversation and share with those that have a passion for caring about our historic burying grounds and keeping some of those old stories and connections to what Connecticut once was alive.

Presentations and discussions on all matters of protecting and caring for these historic places is our networking focus. Topics from cleaning old stones, searching records for past information and present-day monitoring of what we have already lost and how to protect the remaining artifacts.

10:15 am Ruth Shapleigh-Brown Exe. Dir. of CGN will welcome all; show some slides to bring new comers up to date on basic care, observations and various issues concerning old burying grounds.

11:00am presentation that will focus on LiDAR scanning of historic cemeteries and burying grounds and how he has developed the ability to add ground penetrating data into his hand held above ground LiDAR software. This unique combination of visualizing above ground features with below-ground anomalies is game changing.

Elmore Design Collaborative, LLC, Historical Landscape Architecture, and The GeoNAV Group, LLC, LiDAR Scanning and Mapping, out of Suffield, CT.

Tom is a Historical Landscape Architect with 35+-yrs. of experience and works closely with Radar Solutions International, Inc., Geophysical Investigations, out of Waltham, MA

12:00 to 12:45pm – will be a break for lunch and visiting with speakers and sharing hand out information.

12:50pm – a talk about Stone Carvers: Introduction to CT’s Marble Valley and the generational marble men who not only endured but thankfully prospered in a hamlet.

From Earth Science to Lapidary to genealogy to gravestone epitaphs.

By J. Fenton Williams, Ph.D. of Torrington

1:15pm Mike Saman of the Bristol Cemetery Commission will be giving slide show and talk about the local old burying grounds in Bristol. The Bristol community has been very active and always devoted to caring for and their local history through maintaining their old burying grounds.

Although there isn’t time for a formal in advance registration you are welcome to contact Ruth Brown for any inquiries at email shapbrown@cox.net (please use subject heading of Bristol meeting) or you can call and leave a message at 860-643-5652. The library is at the corner of Main & High St.; 5 High St., Bristol 06010, for the front door and around to Main St. for the parking lot and side entrance.