The Gravestone Guardian's Manual
A comprehensive guide for North American cemeteries — by Cara & James Kent. Everything you need to know before you touch a stone, and everything after.
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Eight parts, in the order you actually do the work.
Before You Touch Anything
Permission and cemetery law, federal rules on veterans' markers and Native American remains, and a documentation system built around your phone.
Know What You're Dealing With
Identifying slate, marble, granite, sandstone, brownstone, limestone, zinc and fieldstone; the ten most common growths; and a five-level condition rating.
Cleaning the Right Way
Which cleaners the independent testing supports, the D/2 protocol step by step, and the special cases — iron stains, salts, sulfation crusts.
Maintenance & Repair
Drainage, trees and roots, resets with lime mortar, epoxy repair, and when to stop and call a conservator.
Reading the Stones
An illustrated reference to the symbols carved into American gravestones, and 350 years of memorial art history.
Finding What's Lost
Cemetery mapping, unmarked graves, historical research, and printable field forms in the back of the book.
Every Form in the Books — Free
Both books print their forms in the back, so they stand on their own. Full-size copies are free to download here.
Field Forms
From The Gravestone Guardian’s Manual: Stone Condition Survey, Permission Request Letter, Cleaning Log, Volunteer Day Checklist, Repair Record, Project Estimate Worksheet, Business Launch Checklist and Cemetery Mapping Form.
Get the eight field forms →
Business Forms
From The Gravestone Guardian’s Business Manual: Service Agreement, Change Order, Volunteer Release, Launch Checklist, State-by-State Starting Points, Startup Budget, Hourly Cost and Pricing, Market Survey, Site-Walk Record, Estimate and Proposal, Permission Letter, Job-Day Checklist, Client Report, Maintenance Agreement, Marketing Calendar, Grant Tracking, Job Cost Record, Mileage Log, Customer Contact Log, Stone Photograph Log and Annual Price Review.
Get the twenty-one business forms →
Coming Soon: The Gravestone Guardian’s Business Manual
The companion book: how to start and run a small, honest cemetery preservation practice. It covers choosing your services, setting up the business, pricing every job so the practice lasts, finding customers, grants and town work, and running each job so one cemetery leads to the next. Paperback and Kindle editions are on the way.
Who It's For
Families caring for an ancestor's stone. Volunteers from historical societies, DAR chapters and veterans' organizations. Town cemetery committees working on tight budgets. Genealogists who want to record stones before more are lost. Anyone who has stood in an old burying ground and wondered whether there was something they could do.
The book stands on its own — every field form it describes is printed in the back. The free tools on this site are a convenience on top of it.
Buy the Paperback Kindle Edition
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