Even if you’ve never met them, there’s little chance that you haven’t seen brothers Tony and John Pacheco hard at work performing a skillset that very few in the region possess.

The brotherly stone mason pair has been at work for months now — although they had to take a break through the harshest part of the winter — meticulously restoring the historic wall of the North Burial Ground that abuts Hope Street; which is being done as part of the cemetery’s 200th anniversary, which officially took place last year in 2022.

“The iconic whitewashed stone wall along Hope Street is being rebuilt to prevent further deterioration due to age,” writes Charles Cavalconte, chairman of the Commissioners of Cemeteries for Bristol, who researched the history of the stone wall. “The Cemetery Commission is supervising the repair and restoration, which involves relaying the stones, resurfacing the wall with cement, a process known as parging, and then finished with whitewashing.”

The difference in the stretch of wall that has deteriorated versus the parts that have been restored is easily seen, and if you’ve walked by the Pacheccos as they’re chipping away at the process, you can see that this is not a project that can be rushed. It’s something that is done stone by stone, piece by piece, a few inches at a time.

While the north and south walls of the cemetery are “dry walls”, meaning they are held together using only weight, balance and gravity of the stones placed atop one another, the wall along Hope Street is a “parged” wall, which includes a stucco-type covering, ostensibly for aesthetic purposes. However, Cavalconte says it is a mystery why the wall was whitewashed when it was first completed.

“If anyone knows why, please let us know,” he wrote. “For years it has been a community service project of the Boy and Girl Scouts to whitewash the wall.” Rei Battcher, Bristol’s eminent historian, additionally hypothesized that perhaps the wall was painted white in order to boost its visibility in accordance with the paving of Hope Street in 1912, to avoid potential nighttime collisions coinciding with an increase of traffic.

Cavalconte said that the original wall along Hope Street likely dates back to the founding of the land as a cemetery, likely between 1822 and the first internments in 1824. But its fortification into a parged wall, he has found, has no specific mention in historical records, at least none of which that have been found at this time. The best guess currently is that it is at least 100 years old.

The restoration process is not paid for using Bristol tax dollars, but is instead funded by the cemetery’s perpetual care fund, which is financed through a percentage of the cost of buying a grave.

If anyone has any additional information about the wall or its history, reach out to Charles Cavalcante at ccavalconte@yahoo.com.