Their rest was interrupted on either May 3 or May 4, Taylor Lewis believes.
That’s when someone (or someones) made their way into the Fredericksburg City Cemetery, and, under the cover of night, toppled at least 15 headstones and damaged several more.
The cemetery, which dates back to 1844 and is often confused with the adjacent Confederate Cemetery, is governed by the nonprofit Fredericksburg Cemetery Company, Inc. For Lewis, the group’s president, the first hint that something was amiss came Monday night, when a landscaping crew reached out about some downed headstones.
The next morning, he and other board members took stock of the damage themselves.
“You have your periodic, you know, somebody goes in and they knock over a stone,” he said. “But nothing on the scale of what we experienced from this over the weekend.”
Lewis said that the cemetery’s stone conservator has begun preparing an estimate for repairs, which could exceed $20,000. Some of the toppled headstones can be mortared and color-matched, a process that Taylor described as “very tedious.”
But, he added: “A couple were broken so badly that is no restoration.”
One such unsalvageable case involves a family section with a cross that was twisted off its base and shattered.
Not all headstones are set the same, Lewis explained. Some are cemented to their base, some are pinned, and some essentially rely on gravity to keep them firmly in place.
“They’re extremely heavy, and they knocked over some big ones,” Lewis said.
Headstones are cleaved are shown off their base. (Submitted photo)
The cemetery’s board filed a report with the Fredericksburg Police Department on May 6, and Lewis described an investigator’s efforts to dust those headstones with a polish finish for finger and palm prints. He spent much of yesterday canvassing the neighbors who border both cemeteries in hopes that someone saw something.
According to a Facebook post from the cemetery, members of the Virginia State Police bloodhound team, which just happened to be in town for training, agreed to sweep the cemetery for a trace of the intruder.
“Their efforts successfully traced the suspect’s path through the cemetery, confirming entry and exit points behind the wall and through neighboring residential properties, where one neighbor also reported a previously closed and chained gate had been left open that night,” the post reads.
The cemetery, described on its website as “the final resting place for many of Fredericksburg’s most notable and influential citizens,” is asking for donations to help cover the costly repairs.
Both cemeteries are outfitted with cameras, and Taylor said that he’s already downloaded footage from the nights in question.
“Hopefully something will come out of those prints, and something will come out of the video,” he said. “Because there’s a lot of damage and a lot of expense.”
