Patch Helps Preserve the Past at Vine Lake Cemetery

Each year, Patch.com encourages its employees to get out into the community, to give back, to really get their hands dirty in the towns in which they work.

This year I did just that and got my hands dirty at Vine Lake Cemetery. 

For quite some time, I've watched Vine Lake Preservation Trust Founder and Director Rob Gregg share his enthusiasm about the local cemetery that has been the subject of many works of art and even a few films. 

I've heard countless residents talk about their experience learning how to clean headstones and upright fallen gravestones and monuments. 

I was glad to have the chance to check it out myself and learn a skill I never thought I'd like as much as I did. 

Editor's Note: Be sure to check out our "before" and "after" photos. We used a special "biowash" formula that is environmentally and historically friendly. 

Clearing the stones of lichen, a fungi/algae combination, is no small feat in the town's sole cemetery which dates back to 1651. 

But not only did Gregg teach me how to do clean and preserve headstones, he also taught me the importance of those stones as time goes by. The cemetery contains local names -- Baxter, Chenery, Kingsbury, etc. -- of people important to Medfield's history, as well as names of other people (like Lowell Mason and John Jesse Francis) or those related to them (like relatives of William Howard Taft and Margaret Mead) who are important to the nation's history.

Gregg has a wealth of knowledge so it is no surprise that he was awarded the 2012 Historic Preservation Award from the Medfield Historical Commission. 

In 2008, Gregg, who has lived in town for 40 years, was working on a family genealogy project in the cemetery -- he has since learned he is related to more than 1,000 people buried there -- when he became disheartened and created the Vine Lake Preservation Trust.

In the five years since, Gregg and a group of dedicated volunteers have given the cemetery a new face. Landscaping has been improved, gravestones have been righted and repaired, and many have been cleaned by laypeople like me.

You, too, can help preserve part of Medfield's history. For more information, contact Gregg through www.vinelakepreservationtrust.org