Summer & autumn 2015 friends and members of Denmark Historical Society began photographing gravestones in a few of Denmark’s oldest cemeteries.  July 22^nd John Patrick led the youth group to both Fessenden & Fessenden Ingalls Cemeteries atop Fessenden Hill. Members of the youth group inventoried and photographed the gravestones.

We were blessed with a warm summer and autumn and DHS volunteers, Jolene Snow and Lee Ann Shand, continued to photograph more of the older cemeteries around Denmark from August through November.

The town of Denmark mows each cemetery monthly when warm weather begins through to autumn. This year the town crew did upkeep work to Holt, Head, Pingree Berry and School House Cemeteries.

While we are hard at work inventorying graves in the cemeteries we noticed in our older cemeteries that stones are deteriorating. Not only are stones collapsing and breaking, but the writing is disappearing and stones are becoming unreadable.

At this time Denmark does not have a volunteer network which repairs fallen stones and cleans them with Maine Old Cemetery Association standards.