Return to Chautauqua County Gen Web   page.

• Cleaning a Gravestone offers advice on how, and if, to clean a gravestone.
• Cleaning and Preservation of Tombstones from Joseph J. McCabe
  
• Symbolism on Gravestones, summarized from The Association for Gravestone Studies.

Click on the town for the cemetery data available.

Lives are commemorated, deaths are recorded, families are reunited,
Memories are made tangible, and love is undisguised; This is a cemetery.
Communities accord respect, families bestow reverence,
Historians seek information and our heritage is thereby enriched.
Testimonies of devotion, pride and remembrance are cast in bronze
To pay warm tribute to accomplishments and life, not the death of a loved one,
The cemetery is homeland for memorials
that are a sustaining source of comfort to the living.
A cemetery is a history of people
A perpetual record of yesterday and a sanctuary of peace and quiet today.
A cemetery exists because every life is worth loving and remembering - always.

    by Mary Lou Brannon