The Jackson Purchase Historical Society (JPHS) will meet on Saturday, October 7, 2023 at 10:30 am in the Community Room of the Graves County Public Library in Mayfield. The speaker will be Betty Johnson of MOUNT (Many Old Unique Needy Tombstones), Inc. who will discuss their cemetery preservation efforts and how other communities can adopt them. The Society is pleased to be part of the month-long Haunted Graves celebration and to be working with the Graves County Public Library. The program may be available by ZOOM, but we will send a 2nd email if that is worked out.
Betty describes MOUNT this way. MOUNT was founded in April 2009 as a nonprofit organization. Our first project was Mt. Pleasant Cemetery located between La Center and Bandana, Kentucky to restore stones with the help of Jonathan Apell from New England and George Bell from Cairo, Illinois. We held cemetery restoration workshops and applied for a grant to restore three different cemeteries. Eventually, we begin to tackle abandoned 1800s and early 1900s cemeteries in fields and woods for descendants with cleanups and stone restoration work. Our cemetery restoration work is only done in Ballard County as there is continuous work needed in both community cemeteries and those hidden away. Our cemetery crew is small, but we consistently try to enlist volunteer workers and educate the public regarding the need to restore community historic cemeteries. Our purpose is cemetery preservation and “Do No Harm.”
“The Jackson Purchase Historical Society is very happy to have Betty Johnson share her and MOUNT’s work in Ballard County with our membership. Cemeteries are an important and visible part of the landscape of the Purchase sand range from large, well-maintained cemeteries to small, rural cemeteries that served a family that has moved out of the region – and a wide range in between. MOUNT’s work has attracted attention and Betty has been in the forefront.,” according to JPHS President Bill Mulligan.