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Though Zion Church's cemetery in Urbana may have suffered long years of neglect, passion for preserving the historic graveyard is far from dead and buried.
Twenty-four people gathered in the cemetery on Saturday to learn about how volunteers could help keep the 200-year-old cemetery in good condition for future generations.
The church, located on Urbana Church Road between Fingerboard Road and Urbana Pike, was abandoned by an act of its congregation after a fire rendered it unusable in 1961. For more than 40 years afterward, the church and the graveyard suffered neglect and vandalism, according to Knight Kiplinger, co-chair of the Zion Church Preservation Committee.
The graveyard is the final resting place of Charles Johnson, the founder of Urbana, and members of several noted southern Frederick County families, Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans, Kiplinger said.
Kiplinger, of Washington, D.C., became involved in preserving the cemetery in the late 1980s.
In 2005, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland donated the property to the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation, which contracts with the preservation committee to keep up the church and its grounds.
He said that the exterior structure of the church has been mostly restored, but work on the interior church and the cemetery is ongoing.
On Saturday, members of the preservation committee hosted a talk by Robert Mosko of Mosko Cemetery Monument Services, who discussed burial customs of the 19th century, and led the group in a hands-on workshop on basic cleaning and preservation of cemetery monuments.
Amanda Becker of the statewide Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites was also present Saturday to help educate volunteers with a passion for preserving gravesites.
She said part of her organization's goal is to educate people about the laws regarding burial place preservation. Becker said the law allows any relative to visit a graveyard where their family members are buried, regardless of whether the burial place is privately owned.
She also said there is a loophole in state law that allows abandoned graveyards to be developed, which the coalition is working to close. "It's not abandoned by those who are interred there," she said.
Kiplinger said he hopes the attendees will remain involved with the preservation committee's effort, and hopes that they will come back for "work parties" in the spring to help clean and restore the monuments.
He said it was important for volunteers in Urbana to keep the site safe from the ravages of time, but also from vandalism. The graveyard was recently vandalized, Kiplinger said: "It's a sad commentary on some of the youth today."
But just as some young people desecrated the graveyard, others, including Urbana High School sophomore Robbie Friscia of Ijamsville, were present Saturday to learn how to help keep it beautiful.
Volunteers learned from Mosko how to use diluted cleaning solution and gentle brushes to remove grime without damaging the monuments. Kiplinger said the goal was not to keep the tombstones pristine, but to keep them mostly free from grime that would accelerate the aging process.
"The object is not a bright, white tombstone," he said.
