Shanesville Civil War obelisk restored
Tim and Stacy Foor, inside the wooden tripod, work on replacing the upper portion of the headstone of Civil War veteran Dr. Noah Webster Yoder. Working alongside them are Dan Crenner, left, and American Legion Post 494 members J.R. Bitikofer and Jeff Schrock.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 6, Tim and Stacy Foor of Hallowed Ground Cemetery Preservation LLC rolled up the hill leading to the Shanesville Reformed Cemetery, ready to take on another project.
This time their project consisted of repairing and straightening the 9-foot-high obelisk granite headstone of Civil War veteran Dr. Noah Webster Yoder.
The stone was tilting badly, and years of weathering had created cracks and loss of color.
Realizing the situation the monument was in, members of the American Legion Post 494 of Sugarcreek started a Save the Monument Fund and procured funding to bring Foor in to rectify the problems.
“The money came in quickly because people recognized the need and wanted to find a way to honor those who served,” said Jeff Schrock, member of American Legion Post 494.
After about seven hours, a new obelisk emerged from its former cocoon. The stone pointed heavenward at a perfect angle, the cracks and chips were gone, and the Yoder monument was now in stable condition.
It was an effort the legion members valued greatly, enough so that they expect to have the Foors back later to do some work on other headstones, and they did it all without any type of machinery.
“I don’t like the idea of bringing in machinery and tearing up a cemetery,” Tim Foor said. “It’s just a respect thing. People invite us in to work on their stones because they respect the past, and our goal is to restore dignity and respect to a burial site without interfering with anything in the cemetery. We take great pride in restoring stones and bringing back beauty to hallowed places.”
The Yoder headstone marked the first work of the 2023 season for Foor, who said it’s always exciting to kick off a new spring by working with good people on a worthwhile project.
The Foors started by tearing the stone down piece by piece including taking the base out of the ground and reworking the stones below, which allowed them to adjust the stone’s angle back to normal.
After leveling the base, Foor started at the bottom and added each piece as the obelisk began to be reassembled.
Foor began his career in rescuing cemetery markers several years ago. His career began when a cemetery in Delaware County where his grandparents were buried was not being cared for, so he stepped in and cared for it as a volunteer.
A neighboring cemetery needed help, and when the people caring for that facility asked Foor to restore some stones there, they offered to pay for classes to learn the proper way to do that if he volunteered for a year, and that set in motion his new career of restoring headstones.
Since that time six years ago, Foor has been in demand, working all over Ohio and even down into the Carolinas.
“There’s not a lot of people who do what I do,” Foor said.
Foor said the Yoder obelisk is a fairly big project because of its size, but he has worked on much larger projects that require a bigger setup with a double tripod system.
Schrock said they began a search for someone to do the job, and Foor’s name quickly came to the top of the list. He said a little research told them everything they needed to know about the company, and they were eager to invite the Foors over to view the project.
Because of the steep slant of the hill in the cemetery, the job required a great deal of planning, and once the large wooden tripod was in place, it still required plenty of finagling to finally get the largest portion of the stone on top.
“This is stone, and it won’t last forever, but we are trying hard to preserve history as long as possible,” Foor said.
The committee asked Foor if he could restore the lettering, which Foor said was something he wouldn’t do because the chances of destroying the lettering on the marker were far too high and not worth the risk.
“That stone is 200 years old,” Foor said. “You take a chisel to it and start pounding into it, chances are it’s not going to go well.”
Local historian Dan Crenner and legion member J.R. Bitikofer also were on hand to see the effort through, recording the event for posterity, and they too were pleased with the final result. They also lent a hand in moving around some of the main pieces of the monument. The toughest part was maneuvering the top portion of the monument into place atop the pedestal, and Tim Foor said it weighed in between 300 and 400 pounds.
With that much weight, it would seem to make sense to use machinery to hoist it upward, but Foor said he never uses machinery out of respect for each cemetery in which he works.
Once the stone was back at a proper angle, that left one stone unturned. The top of the monument had been missing for decades, and nobody knew exactly what was once perched atop the obelisk.
Schrock said they put their heads together to come up with a solution, and after a lengthy search, they never uncovered what was atop the monument.
Someone then suggested an eagle because Yoder was a Civil War hero, and the legion turned to Wilson’s Country Creations in Killbuck, which created a 13-inch eagle with its wings spread, ready to take flight. It provided the finishing touches on the newly restored monument.
Foor also cleaned the stone with a product called D2 Biological Solution, a product he sells to caretakers who want to clean their stones. He said once the product has a chance to work its magic, the stone will look magnificent.
“It’s a product that is safe and doesn’t harm the stone,” Foor said. “It allows the details of the stone to flourish.”
With the work complete, a celebratory ceremony is slated to take place Saturday, June 3 at the Shanesville Reformed Cemetery in Sugarcreek to honor two Civil War veterans for their service during that war.
The honorees include Yoder and Frederick Erwin, both members of Company G, 51st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.