Matthew Barnes recently installed a new fence along the edge of Bush Cemetery. (Bush Cemetery, Atchison County Missouri Facebook photos)

Matthew restored the William Lentz stone and added a new finial to the top. The stone now stands at just under six feet tall and may very well be the tallest in the cemetery.

Matthew Barnes is pictured last week after he had raised Una Neisen’s stone, which weighs roughly 800 pounds. He started by lifting the base out of the hole. The old base had broken years ago, and consisted of a shallow poorly poured concrete slab. Matthew removed all the concrete and dug down to the frost line, then filled the hole with pea gravel before setting the base back in the hole. He set the base lower than it was originally to help resist heaving. The stone itself had fallen four feet down the hill, and sank five inches into the ground. He slowly drug the stone up the hill with the tripod, cleaned the bottom of the stone, and spread the mortar before finally lifting the stone into place.

Here are the “before” and “after” looks of Donald Slemp’s stone thanks to the restoration efforts of Matthew Barnes. You can also see how the growth has been cleared and the stones reset and restored in the background. (Bush Cemetery, Atchison County Missouri Facebook photos)

Leona Slemp took over the mowing of Bush Cemetery following the death of her husband, Dick, in 1964.

Bush Cemetery is a small, one acre cemetery in Clay Township, located on Hwy. KK off Route J in Atchison County, Missouri. The cemetery, first established in the 1850s, saw a restoration effort by Dick Slemp of Rock Port begin around 1958. Dick’s grandfather was the first to be buried there following his death July 2, 1854, at the age of 42. Dick raised funds from area residents and erected a fence to enclose the cemetery. He mowed and cared for the cemetery until his death in 1964. His wife, Leona, continued mowing for another five years. Since that time, the only cemetery maintenance was the burning off of the grass by those farming the ground adjacent to the cemetery.

In 2018, the cemetery began to see a rejuvenation thanks to the efforts of a teenager, Matthew Barnes of Iowa. Matthew is the son of Carrie Karg and Joel Barnes and the grandson of Jutta and the late Douglas Slemp and the late Carol and Kenneth Barnes. For three years, Matthew and his family, friends, and a group of volunteers have put hard work into making the cemetery beautiful again. To see the cemetery now compared to what it looked like when he began is just so breathtaking! Not only has he cleaned up the property by clearing brush and trees, but he has also completely restored headstones that were lying in pieces or absolutely unreadable when he first began. He has also installed a new fence and a new gate which was built by Tarkio Tech.

One recent restoration included the stone of George Davenport. George was born on January 16, 1855, to Marshal and Amanda Jones Davenport in Crawford County, Indiana. The Davenports came to Atchison County in 1856 via covered wagon, making George one of the first white children in the area. He was also the third burial in the cemetery and died while his father was off fighting in the Civil War. In 1958, Dick Slemp cleared Bush Cemetery of its brush and found George’s stone broken at its base. He dug a hole and set the stone in a puddle of concrete. Matthew said, “Today we know that when concrete is adhered to marble it causes damage to the marble. I removed the concrete and cleaned the original base which was right behind the puddle of concrete. I cleaned the stone and set the base on a bed of gravel before mortaring the stone into its base.”

Another recent restoration effort completed by Matthew included the stone of William Lentz. The stone had toppled and Matthew not only completely restored it and set it back up, but he also added a new finial to the top. The stone now stands at just under six feet tall and may very well be the tallest in the cemetery.

Matthew has also found about 90% of the footstones to go with the headstones. A lot of cemeteries removed footstones in the 1960s as larger, rider mowers became common. The plan is to reset all the footstones far enough from the headstones to mow between them.

The cemetery sits on private property surrounded by fields, but thanks to Matthew’s efforts, several people made the trek out to the cemetery for Memorial Day this year to pay their respects. Taking care of our loved ones’ last resting place should always be a priority, but with location, time, and money, we can’t always see it gets done. Thanks to Matthew, the resting place of around 200 individuals is now looking as nice as one could hope it would be, if not more.