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Local project restores rural Howard County cemetery

Posted 8/31/21

By Grace Stumbaugh

Dr. Robert Woods, aged 81, of Columbia, Mo., has always been interested in his family’s genealogy. He has books and binders full of family historical records and knows …

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Local project restores rural Howard County cemetery

Posted

By Grace Stumbaugh

Dr. Robert Woods, aged 81, of Columbia, Mo., has always been interested in his family’s genealogy. He has books and binders full of family historical records and knows more information about his ancestors than does the average person. Recently, this interest in his family’s past led him to take on a more hands-on project: restoring an old family cemetery.

The Woods family cemetery is located on a farm about seven miles toward Glasgow on Hwy 240. The farm was originally owned by Woods’ great-great-grandparents, James and Lucretia. It is now in the hands of Jerome and Kathleen Thies.

Although Woods grew up in Columbia and not on the farm where the cemetery stands, he’s known about the cemetery since he was a child. His grandmother first pointed it out as they passed by it on a car ride around 1950.

“Not too long after that, I persuaded our folks to take us to the cemetery,” Woods remembered. “It was overgrown, even at that point, and had toppled stones.”

After visiting the plot with his parents when he was about 10 years old, Woods’ interest in learning about his family genealogy and the cemetery’s history was piqued.

“Robert has been into the genealogy on both sides of our family and has it down to the 1600s on some,” his sister, Ruthie Craven, said. “He has delved into everything about our family, every cemetery, he could find a connection to.” She mentioned that he has been into genealogy since he was about 12 or 13 years old.

Craven observed that many old family cemeteries are often left to deteriorate, and the Woods’ burial ground is no exception. The cemetery is behind the property’s farmhouse, nestled in a cluster of trees. It is composed of numerous headstones, which are in varying stages of decay. The older ones, made of limestone, are in the worst condition; the newer granite ones have fared better. The oldest plot dates to the late 1800s and the most recent to the 1940s, so some of those headstones have been exposed to the elements for over a century.

Woods began to get serious about the restoration project about 15 years ago when he retired from being a United Methodist minister, but the physical process didn’t begin until April of this year. 

When it did, the first order of businesses was clearing the landscape of long grass, thickets, and branches which cluttered access to the site. “I think the big thing had been trying to find someone who was interested in doing it. That was a big challenge,” Craven said.

She asked in a neighborhood Facebook group if anyone knew of a company that would be willing to take on the work. A recommendation led to Car-Dex Companies, which operates out of Montgomery City, and is owned by Travis Carr and Jefferey Poindexter. It took them two workdays to clear the area. They stuck around to help out with the cleaning of the grave markers.

“This was something that they did out of the generosity of their hearts,” Craven said. “They said they wanted to make sure they did it right, because they knew how very important it was. It wasn’t just a business thing; it became kind of personal to them, too.”

Woods acknowledged that the clearing process would have taken longer if the Thies’s hadn’t allowed for debris to be deposited at the edge of their property as an alternative to removing it entirely.

The cemetery is now cleared out, and more dedicated repairs to the grave markers can begin. Some stones have fallen, and some have broken. It will take professional efforts to get the markers restored to their original state, and Woods and Craven are actively looking for companies interested in the restoration.

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