A professional cemetery restoration specialist spent several days at Wright City Cemetery this week and last, providing much needed attention to some of the town’s oldest gravestones.David Snyder, founder of the business Jacob’s Ladder, came to work at the cemetery after being contracted by the Wright City Cemetery Memorial Society. His business provides stone reconstruction, leveling, cleaning and repair at cemeteries throughout Missouri.Many of the stones addressed by Snyder date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. He said the gravestones themselves were free of damage, but some have bases that need to be replaced. Most of the work at the Wright City Cemetery consisted of righting monuments that were leaning so far they were in danger of falling over.“Mainly what we’re doing is straightening things up. Things that were leaning and dangerous,” Snyder explained.Snyder’s business is based in Huntsville, Mo. He and his children have been restoring cemeteries for 11 years, and work on about 600-800 stones per year, he said. They specialize in early 1900s and older gravestones made of marble and sandstone, which predate the modern use of granite.He said keeping older cemeteries in good condition ensures the people who first settled Missouri aren’t forgotten.“The way that I look at it, those people did the hard work, and we stand on their shoulders. We live the way that we do today because of what they’ve already done, and we need to respect that,” Snyder said.The gravestones repaired in Wright City were the ones most in need of work, Snyder explained. Many of them were righted by removing them from the ground, leveling the base with fine gravel, then putting the stones back in place. There are others with less serious issues that might benefit from work in the future, Snyder said.He commented that for a long time, he was afraid that cemetery preservation would die with a generation of retired Americans because younger people didn’t pay much attention to the issue. But new developments in how people connect with their roots, through websites like Ancestry.com, have reawakened people’s interest discovering and preserving the history of their families and communities, Snyder said.“In the last few years, I’ve seen people in their 20s and 30s and 40s get on cemetery committees. And when they do ... they’ve got the energy. I’ve seen a lot of cemetery committees be re-energized by young people coming in.”Marie Hollenbeck with the Wright City Cemetery Memorial Society explained that normally graves would be cared for by family members. But that won’t happen for these graves.“These are individuals who no longer have family left in the area, no one left to take care of the tombstones,” Hollenbeck said.Despite no immediate relatives, she said the family names on the century-old stones are still familiar to many in Wright City — Ruhwedel, Heidtmann, Wolthaus, Roelker, Werner and Wahlbrink, Osterwald, Chambers, Woltemath, Trau and Seger.These are the names of those who called Wright City home during the early years of the town’s founding in the mid-1800s. The restorations will ensure their memorials endure for years more.

Cemetery restoration specialist David Snyder spent several days at the Wright City Cemetery correcting century-old gravestones that were leaning dangerously. Snyder’s business, Jacob’s Ladder, does work throughout Missouri. 

Record photo/Adam Rollins