Getting acquainted with Kansas City’s history, one gravestone cleaning at a time

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Even lifelong Kansas Citians may not know that nestled just south of Union Station and Crown Center is Missouri’s oldest cemetery.

Spanning 29 acres in the Union Hill neighborhood, the historic Union Cemetery was established in 1857, four years before the Civil War.

It’s also a city park, purchased by the Parks and Recreation department in the 1930s.

“We are this great green space in the middle of the city,” said Heather Faries, vice president of the Union Cemetery Historical Society. “We have pollinator gardens, and this year we had six beehives installed working with Bee KC.”

The cemetery serves as the resting place for several notable figures in Kansas City’s history, including John Calvin McCoy, known as the “Father of Kansas City,” and Nathaniel McClean Gwynne, a Civil War soldier and one of the youngest Medal of Honor recipients.

It’s not just the known names occupying the cemetery that make it notable, however, but the thousands of unmarked graves whose names were lost to fires, prior mismanagement and time.

Out of the 55,000 people estimated to be buried at Union Cemetery, only about 5,000 markers exist.

A fire in 1889 destroyed 32 years’ worth of records, and newspapers suggest some of the earliest wooden markers were burned during the Great Depression.

Then there was a period in the 1800s when the cemetery fell into less than ethical practices, Faries said. Part of the property known as potter’s field is home to mass burials, and it’s unknown how many bodies were laid to rest in that way.

Other names were simply lost as time wore down their markers made of wood, marble, granite or other materials.

That’s where cleaning and preservation of the remaining gravestones come in.

On a warm and sunny Wednesday morning, Faries walked through each step of Union Cemetery’s gravestone cleaning class.

The class is offered a few times a year and teaches participants which materials to use and how to use them. They then take what they’ve learned and get to work, cleaning dozens of stones each session.

Faries said some people take the class on dates or with friends. One person even attended on her birthday. Others, like her, are just interested in the history and want to give back.

“I got involved because I love history and I love cemeteries,” she explained. “I came here a couple of times with friends that introduced me to it, and I fell in love and wanted to come back and help preserve this place.”

No step in the process is difficult, but each is important to ensuring the stones aren’t unintentionally damaged.

“We always want to try to leave something in better condition than when we found it,” Faries said.

Not just any stone can be cleaned, either. Cemetery staff must first give permission (“If it’s not your family, it’s not your property,“ Faries pointed out), and stones need to be in good enough repair to withstand the chemical cleaner and abrasion of gentle scrubbing.

A stone that is wobbly or in the process of disintegrating is only eligible for the ”spray and walk away" method.

That spray is D2, the cemetery’s chemical compound of choice. It’s non-toxic and activated by water, which means it continues working months or even years after it’s been applied.

“It works best whenever it’s above 40 degrees Fahrenheit because stone expands and contracts just like everything else in the cold and heat,” Faries said. “So, during the summer, it’s more expanded out, it’s more porous, so the D2 can get further into the stone to be able to clean it.”

Once a stone has been gently scrubbed of its lichen covering, nature is left to do the rest of the work. Each time it rains, the D2 is reactivated, so Faries recommends that class participants return a week, a month and even a year out to see their stones get progressively cleaner.

Ultimately, the class doesn’t just benefit the cemetery’s preservation efforts; it gives people a chance to give back and, as Faries put it, face death.

“Some people are super excited. They want to come do this, they think it’s amazing. Some people see it as, I don’t want to say an oddity, but, like, a novelty,” she said. “That’s ok, because it’s not for everybody, but I do think we live in an anti-aging society that does not face death. We kind of brush it under the rug, pretend it doesn’t exist. Here, you can’t really do that.”

Whether it’s a walk through the park, a gravestone cleaning class, or any number of the events Union Cemetery’s volunteers host each year (think bingo, artist booths, arts and crafts), there’s something for everyone in this small piece of KC.

The next cleaning class will be July 19 at 10 a.m. Tickets are available now, but are capped at 20 people. As a nonprofit, all $10 ticket costs and donations go straight back into the cemetery’s initiatives.