Al and Tim Freeland of Northfield Minnesota received permission from the Oak Lawn Cemetery board to restore some gravestones. We use a cleaner called D2 to clean and treat the grave markers.  It won’t damage older and softer stones like marble.  We use the cleaner, then soft brushes to remove lichen on the stone, then rinse with water. Our intent is to provide a free service that allows abandoned or untouched ancient stones to be legible and honor the deceased.

The first stones we restored were John and Jemima Clifford’s. John Clifford was born in 1843 in Maine and died at the age of 65.   He married Jemima Masson in 1885. Jemima Masson was born 1848 in Canada and died in 1922 at the age of 73. John and Jemima had no natural-born children, but they adopted a son named John C. Vieant. During the civil war John enlisted in Co. F, 8th Minnesota, serving three years. After the war he lived for a time on a farm near Stanton, then moved to Northfield. He was engaged in business for a short time with James Law, but for most of the time ran a grocery store. He was one of the best liked men in the city. He was nominated and elected city treasurer. John was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. Jemima was nominated for the position of County Superintendent of Schools, which makes us think she may have been a schoolteacher. She was also nominated the 1 st President of the Northfield Woman’s Relief Corp, which was an auxiliary unit of the Grand Army of the Republic. The emblem of both GAR and WCR are proudly engraved on the family’s main plot stone.