GALLATIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — A group of community members gathered at the Gallatin City Cemetery on Sunday for the city's 5th annual Decoration Day.
"So Decoration Day is a southern tradition where people come into a cemetery like this and you kind of connect with old, past generations," said the city's communications director, Jeff Hentschel.
Equipped with brushes and buckets of water in hand, the group got to work cleaning headstones.
"These stones are about 200 years old, so the families in many cases have long since passed or they've lost connections with who is in this cemetery," said Hentschel.
Volunteers scrubbed away decades of dirt and algae, revealing a new layer of history.
"That's the thing," said Hentschel. "That's why they're so unreadable is just no one has touched them for 150 years, 200 years and here we are today reclaiming the look and the beauty of these monuments."
But the event was about more than cleaning.
"This cemetery's records in the 50's - many of them were destroyed," said Hentschel. "So almost half of the burials we don't have records for in this cemetery."
Now the city is embarking on a mission to restore those records using special software, and being able to actually read the headstones is critical.
Organizers hope the work done on Sunday will make a difference for another 100 years to come.
"You can read about history and you can study history and learn dates, but when you get your hands on history like this it just - I don't know, I don't know how to describe it - it just changes you," said Hentschel. "You're more a part of your community."
