By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
It began as a hobby. It became a calling.
Michael and Jerre Robertson have led efforts to restore tombstones and obelisks at King Hill Cemetery in south St. Joseph. Michael Robertson says a small, dedicated team restored 30 gravestones this year after restoring 25 the year before.
“Our whole mission is dealing with repairing tombstones,” Robertson tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “We’re not there for day-to-day maintenance. That’s a whole separate entity on the maintenance and the mowing of the cemetery. But our whole mission is to fix and repair the tombstones that’s been either damaged by Mother Nature or vandalism.”
The Robertsons established the King Hill Cemetery Restoration and Preservation Association, which they say survives on donations, both of time and money.
The King Hill Cemetery is more than 180 years old, dating back to 1840, one of the oldest area cemeteries. Michael Robertson speculates it began as a family graveyard. It remains active. It spans 20 acres with 16 containing gravestones. A small group of volunteers work with the Robertsons on restoration.
Robertson says the couple’s work at the King Hill Cemetery began shortly after he retired as a Southwest Airlines pilot, sought something to do outside during the COVID pandemic, and began tackling overgrowth in the cemetery.
“As we cleared off the honeysuckle, that’s a very invasive species, we started finding some more indications of gravestones,” Robertson says. “So, that led to another thing. Well, okay, what do we have here? Who’s buried here? Who it is. What it is. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt. And some of our other people that are helping us out get all excited, because we’ll find like a footstone with initials on it.”
Jerre Robertson says restoration goes well beyond simply repairing tombstones and obelisks.
“All the records prior to 1900 were destroyed in a fire at the cemetery years ago,” Jerre Robertson tells Birr during the couple’s appearance on the Hotline. “So, that was our other goal why we wanted to help restore this is try to recover as much as we can, that history. We hope to remap it so we have in the older sections an accurate record of just who all was buried there.”
Jerre Robertson says the work is important and not just to pay homage to those buried in the King Hill Cemetery.
“Anybody that is really in to genealogy knows that a well-kept cemetery is a gold mine of helping you discover your family history,” Robertson says.
A veteran of the Revolutionary War, John Davis, is buried at the King Hill Cemetery as are two veterans of the War of 1812. The Hyde family, for which Hyde Park is named, is buried at the cemetery.
Click HERE for the King Hill Cemetery Restoration and Preservation Association Facebook page.
The Robertsons say the association is working on a new website that should be ready early next year.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.