Clean-up at cemetery reveals unknown history

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Story Published: Oct 28, 2007 at 3:50 PM PDT

By Britt Carlson

Coos Bay- Preserving history and even uncovering some of their own, volunteers put in a hard days work at the Marshfield Pioneer Cemetery.

Continuing to focus their volunteer hours on the cemetery, students and community members unite for Make a Difference day on Saturday.

Marshfield sophomore Jen Andrew participated last year and wanted to see how she could help out again this year, but little did she know how important her presence would be.

"We picked up some trash around everywhere, then we came into this area and we started digging up some weeds and I hit the tombstone. I think, 'Oh no, that can't be good.' I didn't know what it was because it was buried, but then we just completely uncovered it."

The volunteers believe the headstone may have sunk and was overlooked when fill dirt was brought in to level off the cemetery.

Andrew says appreciating that local history is really what brings her out for the work days each year and she still can't believe others tried to destroy it with vandalism.

"It seemed like people just didn't care. I like history so coming out here was really cool. I thought, why would people to that?"

After the big discovery, they spent the rest of the day weeding and preparing the broken headstones for restoration.

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