"Restore, Renew, Rediscover Your Historic Neighborhood Schools!"

3rd Annual Preservation Week 2002 Photo-Essay Competition

First Place: Joshua Powell
High School (9-12 Grades)
11th Grade, Bullitt Central High School, Shephardsville

Title: "Old Shephardsville Cemetery"

The stone lays silent within the bounds of the old Shephardsville Cemetery, a testament to the many years of neglect the area has suffered. The stories it has to tell and the history that it embodies will not lie in wait forever. For even now an oak tree, that was but a sapling when the stone was carved and placed in remembrance, grows and consumes it. The date inscribed upon it, 1807, is barely even visible.

It is a sad tale to tell. One of a people that have forgotten a link to their past. A people that dishonor their ancestors by allowing their hallowed resting grounds to fall into ruin. We are that people. For as long as we choose to leave such sites as the Shephardsville Cemetery to the will of nature we participate in the desecration of our own heritage. If only the people knew what a wealth of history this place had to offer perhaps it could still be saved.

If you listen to what it has to say, it will speak to you. It will tell stories, human stories, of children who died while still in their age of innocence. Of men who lived to see the bloodiest conflict our soils have ever known, and of the leaders who could have ordered them into battle. Of floods and cholera epidemics, of eternal love, and of faith and those who carried it even into death.

This could be a place that people could relate to. The engravings on the stones remind us of our own losses. They can teach us just how precious life and family really are. Their reading, such as "A faithful wife and mother dear, in sweet repose is sleeping here. Her painful loss we deeply feel, but God can all our sorrows heal" and "He was a kind and affectionate husband and father. His smiles cast their rays of cheerfulness throughout our household. He is gone to his reward to live with God forever" silence us all. For these things make us realize where we truly stand in this world, and how quickly all that we know can fade. They remind us of what is important in life.

Though it had been abandoned well over one hundred years all is not lost. At one time there were as many as three hundred monuments on the site, last count (made fifty years ago) turned up on hundred fifty. All that are left have managed to have survived a multitude of floods, vandals, being consumed by the forest, and a great many years of exposure to the elements. With time, money, and effort this historic treasure can be saved from the ravages of apathy, but if anything is to be done it must be done now. We cannot allow for the remaining few monuments to fall into further disrepair. If we fail to preserve our history, how can we ever hope to build a better tomorrow? If we forget our past, how then will we be remembered?

This essay and photograph(s) are the property of Preservation Kentucky, Inc. and Kentucky Heritage Council and that any use of the photo or essay must be approved by PK and KHC.