Working among headstones dating back to the 1700s, Michael Carroll said that he is on a treasure hunt of sorts. Instead of gold, though, he is looking for information.
“When you are cleaning a stone you are finding information that people may not have seen for generations,” said Michael Carroll, founder of the nonprofit Rediscovering History Inc.
Carroll started the volunteer cemetery preservation group in 2020. Rediscovering History was designated as a nonprofit a year later.
"We started with one cemetery in Salem, Connecticut and now we are in multiple cemeteries in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island," said Carroll. “Bringing cemeteries back from the brink of extinction so the public knows who they are and we remember and pay respect to them.”
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The Norwich Historical Society and the Society of the Founders of Norwich are working with Rediscovering History to repair the headstones in the Norwichtown Colonial Burying Ground. Thanks to a grant from the Tenney Foundation, the groups were able to contract with Rediscovering History for the preservation work.
"The stones are really incredible. They tell a story of colonial Norwichtown and the lives that lived here," said Regan Miner, executive director of the Norwich Historical Society. "They help genealogists and local historians learn about these figures in Norwich."
Volunteers with Rediscovering History have spent the last month resetting, repairing, and cleaning headstones in Norwich. In the process, they have even been able to unearth history.
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“Before we started stones were leaning one way or another, they had sunk because gravity is always pulling these stones down. To get them back up you will find a lot of lost information," said Carroll. “When you have a stone and it is reset correctly and it is standing proud and it is clean, the essence of that person is in that stone and you get to tell that person they still exist 200-300 years later and their story still gets to be told now."
Rediscovering History was technically contracted to work on 60 headstones. So far, they have worked on more than 100 and do not have plans of stopping anytime soon.
"Unfortunately we can’t fix everything, but what we can- we are going to try to take care of all of it," said Carroll.
