It was just after 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the harsh summer sun was already laying a beating on the serene grounds of Kickemuit Cemetery along Serpentine Road in Warren.

But you wouldn’t hear Carlo or Betty Mencucci complain about that.
The Burrillville residents were too focused on re-seating an historic tombstone into its new foundation, with Carlo meticulously holding a level along the aged brownstone to ensure it would stand for many more decades to come at the 90-degree angle that was originally intended.

The Mencuccis have become household names in Rhode Island and beyond for their painstaking, award-winning work in gravestone conservation. They have restored hundreds of historic gravestones, most of which are completely unknown to the public, along with some that are household names, such as the gravesite of Bathsheba Sherman, the accused witch whose resting place in Burrillville became famous (and a target of vandalism) following the release of the blockbuster film “The Conjuring.”

Kickemuit Cemetery will be the 42nd historical cemetery that the couple has worked to restore since beginning the work in earnest in 2002, when Betty was named president of the Burrillville Historical Society.

Most of that work has occurred in Burrillville, unpaid, accomplished all on their own and at their own pace. But on certain occasions, like this job in Warren, they receive modest funding (in this case secured through grants from the Heritage Foundation and the Massasoit Historical Society, obtained by Judy Fardig, President of the Warren Unit #11 of the American Legion Auxiliary) to beautify and restore an historic cemetery in another town.

The work is often thankless, and always laborious. It may involve anything from unearthing and straightening stones that are in decent shape, to carefully finding and piecing back together broken or vandalized stones, or even fabricating parts of gravestones that have been completely lost to time.

On Sunday, Betty carved through the root-laden soil to dig a 20-inch trench in order to re-seat the grave stone of Elizabeth Miller, which had completely fractured down the middle. That one restoration, which required splinting the pieces with rope while an epoxy bonded them back together — along with molding entire pieces out of an ancient clay that is specially imported from an ancient-Roman-era quarry — can take more than 10 hours of work.

“We’ve spent three years just in one cemetery to get it all done,” Carlo said.

A work of unrelenting dedication
There has been a resurgence of interest in restoring historic cemeteries in recent years, particularly in Rhode Island, which is home to thousands of historic cemeteries.

“We’re ground zero for cemeteries like this in the country. And that’s mainly because of Roger Williams,” Carlo explained. “Because in other states, they’re buried in church yards. But because of his feelings for separation of church and state, if a family had a farm they would bury the people on their own property, and not in a church yard.”

Therefore, any long-forgotten family plot found out in the woods or on the grounds of a newer development which is older than 100 years is technically an historic cemetery and, by extension, worthy of being protected and restored.

And although there may be an increase in the number of people interested in doing graveyard restoration, Betty and Carlo lament that within that group are well-intentioned people who may not actually possess the knowledge or put in the effort to do the work correctly.

“People want to do things. But it’s a lot of work to dig one of these up and reset it. It can take about an hour,” Betty said. “People want to get things done quick, but this is not quick,” Carlo added.

To gain the proper skills, Carlo and Betty joined the Association for Graveyard Studies, an international organization that hosts educational conferences each year and holds workshops on performing gravesite conservation in a way that won’t do more harm than good.

“The more we learned from them, the more we realized people were doing it wrong and actually destroying the stones,” Carlo said. “They’re doing things that are inappropriate for the stone. You have to know the material. We’re more purists.”

A relatively new grave cleaning chemical — D/2, developed by a Westport, Mass. resident Ted Kinnari — has helped tremendously. The chemical is non-toxic and works to kill organic material, like moss, that covers and deteriorates the stone. It penetrates the stone itself and will continue working for up to a year after application, getting re-activated each time the stone gets wet. The Mencucci’s were treated to a personal presentation by Kinnari shortly after he invented the cleaner over a decade ago.

It has been a long, but rewarding road for the Mencuccis. Although they might differ in their opinions on whether a new generation will pick up the torch they eventually pass to continue the work, it hasn’t stopped them from trying. They have held workshops and educational forums of their own to spread their knowledge, in the hopes that the legacies of the long-dead that they have restored and protected will continue to be honored for centuries to come.

“You can do things and it might be here today, gone tomorrow. [When we started] we didn’t see anyone doing it and doing it in a way that would last. Hopefully 50, 75 years from now these stones will still look the same,” Betty said. “You look at the history of some of these people going way back to the 1800s and 1700s, it’s a history of those people that had something to do with your town — and it’s rotting away like it means nothing. So we’re trying to make it mean something again.”