Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Michigan: Broken Headstones & Unearthed Stories (with Justin Frost) | Episode 93

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Michigan: Broken Headstones & Unearthed Stories (with Justin Frost) | Episode 93 · Stories That Live In Us

0:00
Justin Frost: This is my iteration of an obituary for these people.
0:06
Justin Frost: It's telling their story, telling their lives.
0:09
Justin Frost: Hopefully, somewhere down the line an a descendant will find their story and it will be that aha moment that they need to continue their work and their family history story.
0:21
Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
0:29
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:33
Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
0:44
Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
0:52
Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
0:59
Crista Cowan: Genealogists love a good cemetery.
1:03
Crista Cowan: I've loved cemeteries since I was a kid, and I don't know what came first: my love of family history or my love of cemeteries.
1:10
Crista Cowan: They just feel like a place where the stories are abundant and waiting to be discovered.
1:18
Crista Cowan: My guest today is Justin Frost, and Justin Frost is not your average genealogist.
1:25
Crista Cowan: First of all, he's in his 30s, which some of us get started that young or younger, but a lot of us don't come to family history until a little bit later.
1:34
Crista Cowan: But he's turned his passion for family stories into a hobby and a side gig, which I think is amazing.
1:44
Crista Cowan: So you're gonna hear today all about Justin's work in cemeteries.
1:49
Crista Cowan: And since this is airing the first time in the middle of January, a lot of us, our local cemeteries are buried under feet of snow, maybe difficult to get to because of muddy roads.
2:01
Crista Cowan: But this is the perfect time of year to learn more about the cemeteries before you dive headfirst into them.
2:09
Crista Cowan: And Justin has some really great advice about how to take care of headstones, how to clean them, and he'll share some of his favorite stories about fixing them up.
2:21
Crista Cowan: Now, not only is Justin a great resource for all of us for how to take care of tombstones, but he is a generations deep Michigander.
2:34
Crista Cowan: I learned how to pronounce that word on this episode from Justin.
2:39
Crista Cowan: So as we continue our march across America with America 250, enjoy my conversation with Michigander Justin Frost.
2:48
Crista Cowan: I would love to get to know you a little bit better.
2:51
Crista Cowan: Uh tell me a little bit about who you are, your background, your profession, your your roots.
2:58
Justin Frost: Um, well, my name's Justin Frost.
3:00
Justin Frost: I was born here in Midland.
3:02
Justin Frost: I've lived here all my life, uh, except for about eight months.
3:06
Justin Frost: Um I uh have my family has a long history here.
3:11
Justin Frost: We've been here since 1866 uh in Midland County.
3:15
Justin Frost: Um I actually work a full-time job at the chemical plant uh here in Midland.
3:23
Justin Frost: And I do this gravestone restoration work on the side.
3:28
Justin Frost: Um I have two kids.
3:30
Justin Frost: They've been married for 12 years.
3:35
Justin Frost: 12 years, yep.
3:37
Justin Frost: Uh it's hard to remember sometimes.
3:39
Crista Cowan: I would love to hear the story of how you and your wife met.
3:42
Justin Frost: When I was in middle school, uh I had some friends that just live two doors down the road from me, and they wanted to go to a movie, and they were going to a movie uh in town with some friends of theirs, and um some of the people I knew, some of them I didn't, and that's where me and my wife met.
4:01
Justin Frost: Um and then probably I don't know, three years later we started dating.
4:09
Justin Frost: Uh, we were in high school, uh summer of 2004.
4:14
Justin Frost: Um, and we've been together ever since.
4:17
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
4:18
Crista Cowan: High school sweethearts.
4:19
Crista Cowan: You don't hear that very much anymore.
4:21
Justin Frost: Yeah, in fact, uh, I'll even show you this.
4:24
Justin Frost: This is our prom photo.
4:27
Crista Cowan: High school prom, that's adorable.
4:29
Crista Cowan: And what's her name?
4:31
Justin Frost: Uh her name is Cassandra.
4:33
Justin Frost: Everybody calls her Cassie.
4:35
Crista Cowan: Cute.
4:35
Crista Cowan: And is she also like originally from Michigan?
4:39
Justin Frost: Uh yeah.
4:39
Justin Frost: Yep.
4:40
Justin Frost: Her family, her family's been in Midley County for a really long time, too.
4:44
Justin Frost: Uh probably 1870s.
4:47
Crista Cowan: So your children are gonna get it from both sides.
4:50
Justin Frost: Yes, yeah.
4:52
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
4:53
Crista Cowan: I love that.
4:54
Crista Cowan: Well, um, tell me a little bit about like what stories you grew up with about your family history.
4:59
Crista Cowan: Was there was that or did you come from a storytelling family at all?
5:04
Justin Frost: So uh kind of.
5:08
Justin Frost: Um, my dad's side of the family I didn't really know anything about.
5:13
Justin Frost: Um, my mom's side of the family is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
5:17
Justin Frost: Uh, so I did get to learn a little bit about that side of the family when I was younger.
5:22
Justin Frost: Someone in our family had done a very extensive family tree, uh, tracked us back to France.
5:29
Justin Frost: Um, and so I I learned a little bit about that side of the family.
5:34
Justin Frost: Of course, there was a lot of things the family didn't like to talk about.
5:38
Justin Frost: Um, and there's a lot of things that the family doesn't know because they never talked about those things.
5:44
Justin Frost: Um, so really into my adult life, I had no idea where my Michigan family came from.
5:54
Justin Frost: Um, and that's kind of where my story starts.
5:59
Justin Frost: Uh in 2016, my grandparents had their fifth 60th wedding anniversary.
6:06
Justin Frost: Um, and we had a big party, and we hired a polka band and cleaned out my aunt and uncle's pole barn, had a great time.
6:14
Justin Frost: And uh I thought while I was there, I thought, you know, not too many people hit their 60th wedding anniversary.
6:22
Justin Frost: Um, my grandpa spent 35 years working in a chemical plant.
6:27
Justin Frost: Uh, he'll be 91 this December.
6:30
Justin Frost: Uh but when I realized that, I realized that I wasn't gonna have my grandparents around for a very long time.
6:38
Justin Frost: Um, they're not gonna be around forever.
6:40
Justin Frost: So I decided at that point that I wanted to learn some family history from his side of the family.
6:48
Justin Frost: So I started going over to their house and just sitting at the uh dining table and have a cup of coffee and just started asking him questions.
6:59
Justin Frost: And and it was really surprising to me how much stuff he knew.
7:05
Justin Frost: And I said, How do you know all of this stuff?
7:08
Justin Frost: And he says, Well, back in the 90s, um, Midland did a thing where uh you could do all the research and bring all the paperwork to the genealogical society or whoever it was and turn the paperwork in, and you could be your family could be considered a pioneer family of the county.
7:27
Justin Frost: Well, all of my grandpa's sisters did that.
7:31
Justin Frost: So I remember when I was a kid, we got these god-awful white pullover sweatshirts that had green lettering on them that said first families of Midland.
7:42
Justin Frost: Um, so I went to the uh library and did some research on that and found a lot of the research that they had done.
7:52
Justin Frost: Um, and it just I just I wanted to know more.
7:58
Justin Frost: Um, my grandpa told me that my third great grandfather came to Saginaw um in 1863.
8:07
Justin Frost: Uh likely was trying to avoid fighting the Civil War.
8:12
Justin Frost: Uh, he had three brothers that fought, and one other brother that went to Canada.
8:17
Justin Frost: Um, and he apparently didn't have any desire to fight in the war, so he came to Michigan with one of his other brothers.
8:26
Crista Cowan: Where did he come from?
8:27
Justin Frost: So Oswego County, New York.
8:30
Justin Frost: Uh okay, specifically Richland Station, New York.
8:33
Justin Frost: Um, so I started to research him a lot, and I through talking with my grandpa, I found out that he's buried in our city cemetery.
8:43
Justin Frost: Um, well, at that time I could count on probably both hands the number of times I've been to a cemetery, and it was always for funerals.
8:51
Justin Frost: Um, so I made a trip over there.
8:54
Justin Frost: It was uh November of 2019, and I found his family uh monument, but he didn't have a headstone.
9:03
Justin Frost: He didn't have his own headstone.
9:05
Justin Frost: And I really hadn't gotten very deep into the research yet, and I later found out that that was likely because his wife died first, and then he died 11 years later, and she and he nobody just got him a stone.
9:20
Justin Frost: Um he didn't have a ton of money, he was wealthy, but uh when he died, he he he was wealthy younger in life, but when he died, he he didn't have a whole lot.
9:31
Justin Frost: So I started doing more research on him and found really his origin story.
9:36
Justin Frost: Found his father, um, who was born in 1805 in in Oswego County, or he says Oneida County, but I think that it was what became Oswego County.
9:47
Justin Frost: Um, and that's where that family line stops.
9:51
Justin Frost: I've been searching for nine years now and haven't found even a scrap of evidence on that family line.
9:59
Justin Frost: So it's I'm kind of at the point where I've stopped.
10:04
Crista Cowan: So this so this ancestor who came to Michigan, what was his name?
10:08
Justin Frost: Leonard Frost.
10:10
Crista Cowan: And Leonard Frost came, you said, in 1863.
10:14
Justin Frost: Yes.
10:14
Crista Cowan: And did he meet his wife there or did he come with her?
10:18
Justin Frost: He met her in Saginaw City.
10:20
Crista Cowan: Okay, and do you know how she got to Michigan?
10:22
Justin Frost: Um, so her family is actually from St.
10:25
Justin Frost: Clair, uh St.
10:27
Justin Frost: Clair County, uh, Michigan, and they have been in Michigan since 1841.
10:33
Justin Frost: Um, I don't know where they came from.
10:37
Justin Frost: Uh the the there's a possibility that they were living in Canada before they came to Michigan, but 1841's pretty early in in state history, and the records are pretty slim.
10:50
Crista Cowan: Yeah, and and what was his first name again?
10:53
Justin Frost: His first name was Leonard.
10:55
Crista Cowan: Leonard, and what was her name?
10:57
Justin Frost: Her name was Eunice.
10:58
Crista Cowan: Okay, so Leonard and Eunice meet in Midland County and get married.
11:02
Justin Frost: How many in Midland Saginaw?
11:04
Justin Frost: Saginaw City.
11:05
Crista Cowan: Saginaw, okay.
11:07
Justin Frost: Yep.
11:07
Justin Frost: And they got married in 1865 in Saginaw City.
11:12
Crista Cowan: Okay, and then how many children did they have?
11:14
Justin Frost: Three sons and two daughters.
11:18
Crista Cowan: So five kids, did all five kids stay in the area?
11:21
Justin Frost: Uh yes, yes, they did.
11:24
Justin Frost: In fact, uh, I was fortunate enough.
11:27
Justin Frost: Um my grandpa's brother, uh, a few years ago, I went up and visited with him, and and he was uh a few years older than my grandpa, and he remembers my great-great-grandfather, and he used to work a team of horses with him.
11:43
Justin Frost: They they did a lot of work around Midland, digging basements and uh working on corduroy roads and things like that.
11:50
Justin Frost: And and he graded roads when they needed to put a new road in.
11:55
Crista Cowan: Um okay, what's a core what's a corduroy road?
11:59
Justin Frost: So a corduroy road is is what they did in a spot where it's very sandy, loose sand.
12:05
Justin Frost: We have a we have a ton of loose sand here in Midland County.
12:08
Justin Frost: Um, they would grade the road down to a semi-hard surface, and then they would lay cut logs sideways in the road and then cover it back over with sand.
12:18
Justin Frost: So the road had a solid bottom.
12:21
Crista Cowan: Okay.
12:22
Justin Frost: Um there's a lot of stories in Midland County of people getting their wagons, and and when cars came along, they would get their cars stuck in the loose sand, and somebody with a team of horses would have to come and pull them out because there was no other way to get them out.
12:38
Justin Frost: So yeah.
12:39
Crista Cowan: Is it ever amazing to you?
12:40
Crista Cowan: Like, you think I mean, like, we live in the 2020s, and you have uh, let's see, it's your grandfather's brother, so a granduncle who knew your great-great-grandfather.
12:50
Crista Cowan: Like, that's kind of amazing that that it's really not that far back when you start to put it in those kinds of terms.
12:57
Justin Frost: It really isn't.
12:58
Crista Cowan: Depending on the length of those generations, some people are not that far removed.
13:03
Crista Cowan: And when they live to be old and they knew the stories and they knew the people, it's such an important way to connect.
13:10
Crista Cowan: And I love that you took the time to visit your uncle and your grandfather and collect those stories.
13:16
Crista Cowan: So you went to the cemetery.
13:18
Crista Cowan: Um, there was a family, you said a family monument.
13:23
Justin Frost: So when I found it, it was really super dirty, and you could tell that nobody had been there in quite some time to put flowers or anything like that.
13:34
Justin Frost: And uh it was November, so I had time to figure out how I could remedy that.
13:40
Justin Frost: Um I didn't know anything about headstone cleaning.
13:44
Justin Frost: I had seen uh on the news this guy named Andrew Loomish, uh, who is known as the Good Cemetarian uh down in Florida.
13:53
Justin Frost: And I thought, you know, I think I remember seeing somebody cleaning headstones before.
13:58
Justin Frost: Um, so I thought I'm gonna do some research and and figure out what I can do to kind of show some respect and honor my ancestors that came before me.
14:08
Justin Frost: And uh so I I went on the internet and I searched as much as I could, and there was a lot of videos.
14:19
Justin Frost: There was some information, but it was really scarce.
14:22
Justin Frost: It was hard to really tell what was right and what was wrong.
14:27
Justin Frost: Um, I ended up getting in in touch with a group on Facebook and found out that I could use D2 biological solution, um, figured out some ways that I could clean headstones safely, and I was able, I went out uh in the spring and I had just sprayed his headstone or the family monument with uh D2, and I just let it go because I was still really concerned about damaging it.
14:54
Justin Frost: Um it was later that year I found a training class uh downstate, about almost three-hour drive from my house.
15:04
Justin Frost: Um, and I went to that training class and I learned more about cleaning headstones, and uh I also learned how to repair headstones.
15:13
Justin Frost: Um, so that just drove me farther into what would become a uh a real uh obsession.
15:22
Crista Cowan: And uh and all of this just stemmed from wanting to take care of your own family's monument, right?
15:28
Justin Frost: Right.
15:28
Justin Frost: So I I took care of that monument.
15:31
Justin Frost: I ended up finding that we have a ton of family buried in that cemetery, so I went around to all of my direct ancestors and cleaned all of their headstones, and I started to post it on Midland Genealogical Society uh Facebook page and on our historical society Facebook page, and uh that's when people started to really notice what I was doing and started to ask me if I would clean headstones for them.
15:58
Justin Frost: And and of course, at first I did it all on volunteer uh basis.
16:03
Justin Frost: Um so I would go out and clean headstones for somebody and I would take pictures and post them on the historical society page, and and it became uh kind of apparent to me that some of these people were out of state, hadn't been here for many years, remembered coming to these grave plots when they were kids with their grandparents.
16:23
Justin Frost: Um, and it was at that point my buddy says to me, you know, you could probably make this a business and make enough money to support all this other volunteer work that you're doing.
16:35
Justin Frost: Um, so that's what kind of gave the birth to my business was was that that idea.
16:42
Crista Cowan: Well while you're doing this all as a volunteer thing, you're going down this rabbit hole, you're driving hours to take classes.
16:48
Crista Cowan: Like, what does Cassie think about all of this while this is happening?
16:52
Justin Frost: She thinks she thinks I'm insane.
16:54
Justin Frost: Um I think that she's looked at me more than once and said, You are crazy.
17:00
Justin Frost: You know, I think that she has a certain amount of appreci appreciation for it.
17:05
Justin Frost: Um, it does keep me busy, keeps me engaged in something that makes me happy.
17:11
Justin Frost: And uh, and I've introduced this to my children now.
17:15
Justin Frost: You know, my my kids are uh my daughter will be eight next week, and my son will be 12 in August.
17:22
Justin Frost: And uh I started out just taking them to the cemetery, and I'd tell them stories that my grandpa told me about some of these people or things that I found in newspaper articles, and they have really taken an interest in it.
17:34
Justin Frost: Well, it ends up last summer, uh, while they were off school, I was working shift work at the time, so I would have these five-day stretches off.
17:45
Justin Frost: Um, and I would say, Hey, you guys want to go play with your friends at daycare?
17:51
Justin Frost: Or do you want to hang out with me for the day?
17:53
Justin Frost: I'm going to the cemetery.
17:54
Justin Frost: Well, they wanted to go to the cemetery.
17:56
Justin Frost: So well done, dad.
17:58
Justin Frost: Well done.
17:58
Justin Frost: Not only my obsession now, but I share it with my kids.
18:02
Crista Cowan: So it started with your family, it kind of branched out volunteering for other people and cleaning tombstones that had been forgotten or left behind in Michigan.
18:13
Crista Cowan: And now you've made this business out of it.
18:15
Crista Cowan: But as you as you do this and continue, I suspect, to volunteer in a lot of ways as well.
18:20
Justin Frost: Absolutely.
18:22
Crista Cowan: So as you've gotten into this work, I suspect you've caught the attention of a lot of historical societies, genealogical societies.
18:28
Crista Cowan: You maybe worked with some of them.
18:29
Crista Cowan: Like what how do you work with those organizations?
18:32
Crista Cowan: Is it just going out and speaking or teaching, or is there more to that?
18:36
Justin Frost: I so I I have done a lot of speaking engagement.
18:40
Justin Frost: Um, I did uh a presentation in Frank and Muse for the uh Michigan Association of Municipal Cemeteries.
18:49
Justin Frost: Uh that was that was a pretty big deal for me.
18:52
Justin Frost: Um I have had a lot of people downstate around Ann Arbor.
18:58
Justin Frost: I worked with the DAR and the SAR um to help kind of guide and teach someone how to uh restore and repair some headstones in a cemetery that had been absolutely destroyed in the 70s and 80s um by kids partying.
19:18
Justin Frost: They they smashed headstones, they picked them up and moved them.
19:21
Justin Frost: Um, and we're talking whole headstones as big as me in pieces this big.
19:27
Justin Frost: Um, so I have I have reached a few societies like that, um, genealogical societies.
19:35
Justin Frost: I do a lot of speaking engagements for them.
19:38
Justin Frost: There are so many people out there that that come up to me after these presentations and they say, I didn't even know that was possible.
19:46
Justin Frost: Yeah, I did not know you could do that.
19:49
Justin Frost: Um, so it's it's great to get that interaction with the community too.
19:54
Crista Cowan: Yeah.
19:54
Crista Cowan: Well, who would who would have thought, young Justin, that you would be cleaning up and fixing tombstones?
19:59
Crista Cowan: Right, who even considered it?
20:02
Justin Frost: So many people tell me you are so young, but have such an old soul.
20:08
Crista Cowan: I love that.
20:08
Crista Cowan: Have you continued to pursue your own family stories, or are you getting just as obsessed with the stories of other people's families too?
20:17
Justin Frost: I do get pretty obsessed with other people.
20:20
Justin Frost: Um one the other thing that kind of fed into this was in 2019, my wife bought me a metal detector for Christmas, and uh that led to a whole new obsession of researching people's graves who I was working on and and uh and really learning the broader story of Midland Michigan.
20:45
Justin Frost: Um, I find that a lot of people came from New York.
20:48
Justin Frost: Um, I find that there was a lot of uh people that came here for lumbering.
20:53
Justin Frost: Um, and then later on, especially after the Civil War, people came here for farming.
20:59
Justin Frost: Um and uh the you know, the whole homestead act thing really opened up a lot of free land here for people.
21:07
Justin Frost: And uh I I do find that I will find one specific person that I that I'm researching for a video or I'm researching it for a client, and uh I really get drawn into their stories and and will sometimes go on Ancestry and make a family tree for these people and see how far back I can take it, you know.
21:32
Justin Frost: Um, so it's uh yeah, it's not just my family, but it's it's just the story, the story of Midland, I'm I would call it, if I was to write a book.
21:44
Crista Cowan: I love that.
21:45
Crista Cowan: And and when you think about it, right?
21:47
Crista Cowan: Like we talked earlier about the connection between you and your grandfather, back to your great-great-grandfather.
21:53
Crista Cowan: This is a connection between you and the people in this community where your family has lived for generations.
21:59
Crista Cowan: So while you're researching the stories of what you may deem as complete strangers, it very well could be that they were the people that your great-great-grandparents worked with and worshipped with and shopped next to and and associated with on an everyday basis, because how big was how big was Midland back when Leonard moved there, right?
22:18
Justin Frost: Right, yes.
22:19
Justin Frost: So we're not very many people here in in 1866.
22:22
Justin Frost: Um and I I do find uh when I'm researching different people that sometimes their family tree will bleed into mine.
22:32
Justin Frost: So somehow we're a distant cousin in relation or or something like that, you know.
22:37
Crista Cowan: So is there a story that's just stuck with you that you've discovered?
22:43
Justin Frost: Yeah, actually, there's one that I I love to tell.
22:47
Justin Frost: Um, there's a a guy uh buried here in Midland.
22:51
Justin Frost: I found his headstone.
22:52
Justin Frost: It's uh um it's a tall round obelisk, and uh it was broken in three pieces, and it was just kind of piled up next to the base.
23:05
Justin Frost: And uh I said, you know what, one day I'm gonna be confident enough to fix that.
23:10
Justin Frost: And uh when that time came, I I went over and I I you know I talked to the cemetery, got permission to work on it.
23:19
Justin Frost: I I always look for descendants of these people um to talk to before I do any of this stuff.
23:25
Justin Frost: And and of course, there's a lot of different laws around that and and things, but um I got to go ahead to fix it and I repaired it, um, took a bunch of photos, posted them on Facebook.
23:39
Justin Frost: Uh, the monument was really weird because it it just said our father on it, and that was it.
23:45
Justin Frost: Um, so doing a little more research and going, I went to the cemetery office and asked about the grave, and he told me who it was.
23:53
Justin Frost: The guy's name was Haston M.
23:55
Justin Frost: Ellsworth.
23:56
Justin Frost: And that's important because there's two people in buried in Midland City Cemetery, lived around the same time that have the initials H.
24:07
Justin Frost: M.
24:07
Justin Frost: Ellsworth.
24:08
Justin Frost: So, in doing the research of Haston, I found that he came from New York.
24:14
Justin Frost: Um, he was born in the 1820s.
24:18
Justin Frost: He uh got in trouble in New York, and he was arrested and imprisoned uh because he accepted stolen goods.
24:29
Justin Frost: So he was in prison for three years.
24:34
Justin Frost: He wrote a letter to an attorney.
24:36
Justin Frost: The attorney wrote a letter to a judge, and he ended up getting pardoned and released from prison.
24:43
Justin Frost: So then he comes to Michig Michigan, and uh he ends up in Saginaw City, where this is before Midland was even a village.
24:54
Justin Frost: Uh, there was maybe 20 people living in Midland County at the time.
24:59
Justin Frost: And uh he got involved in a party of people that actually came up the Tittabawasi River in a canoe and drove the spike for the place that the uh first courthouse was built in 1858, which is just a year after Midland became a village.
25:18
Justin Frost: So that intrigued me.
25:22
Justin Frost: You know, he went from being a convict to now he's kind of this folklore ish kind of person where he's he's moved up the ranks, so to speak, I guess.
25:34
Justin Frost: Um in doing some more research in him, I found out that he became a very prominent person of Midland.
25:42
Justin Frost: He uh when he died, there was a stained glass window that was uh put in the Presbyterian church in Midland to commemorate him and his life, and he actually was the sheriff of Midland County.
25:57
Justin Frost: So so I did a presentation uh in Frankenmooth last winter uh about gravestone restoration repair, and uh I included his story and I called it XCON to lawman because this was kind of the transition that he made.
26:18
Justin Frost: Um and uh the the significance with the names is when I found out that he had been sheriff, I looked on our Midland County Sheriff website because I figured they had to have a list of all the sheriffs in Midland County, and they did, but they have Horace M.
26:36
Justin Frost: Ellsworth as the second sheriff of Midland County.
26:40
Justin Frost: So I was able to talk to the sheriff and get the record uh changed and corrected um to say Haston M.
26:50
Justin Frost: Ellsworth.
26:51
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
26:52
Crista Cowan: Oh wow, that's really incredible.
26:55
Justin Frost: I bought a bronze flag holder for his grave that says police on it, and I put it in front of his grave and and uh put a flag in it every year for him.
27:03
Crista Cowan: So that's incredible.
27:04
Crista Cowan: So you're not just restoring tombstones, it sounds like you're also restoring people's names and stories and lives to themselves, right?
27:12
Justin Frost: Yeah, yeah, and and I feel like that's kind of something that I give to them when I do this work and and when I put these videos on social media, is so many times I'll find that these people didn't even have an obituary.
27:28
Justin Frost: So I did an interview um two years ago, and somebody said, What do you get out of this?
27:34
Justin Frost: And and I said, You know, this is my iteration of an obituary for these people.
27:42
Justin Frost: It's telling their story, telling their lives.
27:45
Justin Frost: Hopefully, somewhere down the line, and a descendant will find their story, and it will be that aha moment that they need to continue their work and their family history story.
27:57
Crista Cowan: You mentioned earlier that you've looked for descendants of the individuals whose tombstones you're cleaning or repairing.
28:03
Crista Cowan: Have you ever had an experience or a story connected to one of those descendants?
28:07
Justin Frost: I did have one, uh, and it actually involves my wife's family.
28:12
Justin Frost: Um, I cleaned her great great great grandparents' headstone, and I just made a quick little clip of it, and uh I posted it on TikTok, and it was probably six months later, I had somebody message me and they said, Oh my god, I have been looking everywhere for this family.
28:35
Justin Frost: And uh she said that my wife's third great grandfather was her great-great-grandfather's brother.
28:46
Justin Frost: And young when he was young, the the family separated and they moved out to Washington State or Oregon, um, and he never heard from his family again.
28:58
Justin Frost: And uh, she was asking her great-grandfather about it, and he didn't have any information, or if he did, it was likely gone in his mind because he had come down with Alzheimer's.
29:12
Justin Frost: So uh it was interesting to get that message from her.
29:15
Justin Frost: I ended up uh connecting her with my father-in-law, who knows a lot of their family history.
29:22
Justin Frost: Um, some of it he doesn't because I tell him stories about his ancestry.
29:28
Justin Frost: Uh, and he says, Wow, I never knew that.
29:30
Justin Frost: But uh it was kind of neat to make that connection for her so that she could learn more about her extended family.
29:37
Crista Cowan: Such a gift.
29:38
Crista Cowan: I love that so much.
29:39
Crista Cowan: So I would love to get a little technical for a minute.
29:43
Crista Cowan: Um, just for people who are listening to your story and inspired by what you've done.
29:48
Crista Cowan: If they want to start cleaning, let's start with cleaning, not repairing, if they are to start cleaning tombstones.
29:56
Crista Cowan: Um, you mentioned that you took a class to learn how to do this and that you had concerns, valid concerns at in the beginning about one not wanting to damage the stones.
30:05
Crista Cowan: I think there's a lot of people who dive into head stem cleaning with good intentions, not understanding that what they're doing is actually damaging the stones.
30:13
Crista Cowan: Can can you talk to us a little bit about just some basics that everybody should know?
30:18
Justin Frost: Absolutely.
30:19
Justin Frost: Uh, I always tell people when they call me and ask me how to start.
30:23
Justin Frost: I always tell people that there is absolutely no substitute for hands-on training.
30:29
Justin Frost: Um, hands-on training is is the best way to start because you physically have someone showing you exactly how they do it.
30:39
Justin Frost: Um there's a bit of caution in there because not everybody that's teaching people how to do this is doing it the right way.
30:48
Justin Frost: Um, there may even be some things that I do that that uh would be construed as not great.
30:55
Justin Frost: Um, but yes, the hands-on training is is the best.
31:00
Justin Frost: Now, back to my story when I started, the information was very hard to find.
31:06
Justin Frost: And I feel like now with me and many others that have started doing this, the information is you can get on Google or you can go on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, and you can type how to clean a headstone, and you will find somebody's video that explains how to do it.
31:22
Justin Frost: Um so the first rule of thumb is that you don't want to do any harm to the headstone.
31:29
Justin Frost: Um, when I'm training people, I tell them take a good look at the headstone and walk around the whole thing and look at every part of it and make sure that there's no damage, prior damage, it's not loose and wiggly, it's not unstable, it won't fall over on you.
31:46
Justin Frost: Um there these older headstones, marble and uh limestone will will sugar, they get very fragile.
31:54
Justin Frost: Um, and that's something that you really want to look out for because if if any of that is going on, then you definitely don't want to do too much abrasive uh action on the stone.
32:07
Justin Frost: So that's the most important thing is do no harm, no damage to the stone.
32:14
Justin Frost: Um, there's a number of materials that you can use to clean stones that will kill biological solute or biological growth uh without even having to touch it at all.
32:27
Justin Frost: Uh D2 Biological Solution is America's number one selling headstone cleaner.
32:33
Justin Frost: Um there's also another material called Prosico Revive.
32:39
Justin Frost: Those two I can vouch for.
32:41
Justin Frost: I've used them both.
32:42
Justin Frost: I think they both work great.
32:44
Justin Frost: Other than that, you want to use brushes that are very soft.
32:47
Justin Frost: Uh, you want to use brushes that are natural fiber, they'll wear uh before the stone will wear.
32:53
Justin Frost: Uh, you don't want to use metal scrapers, you don't want to use bleach, you don't want to use any household cleaners.
33:00
Justin Frost: Uh those are very in some cases caustic or leave a salt residue behind.
33:06
Justin Frost: The most common thing that I hear people say is, well, I wash it with Dawn dish soap, but Dawn dish soap uh has been shown to leave salt residue, which is very degrading to stone.
33:19
Justin Frost: Um so, like I said before, this this is all why the training is is so very important.
33:28
Crista Cowan: Yeah, well said.
33:29
Crista Cowan: Thank you for giving us that little bit of insight.
33:31
Crista Cowan: I think a lot of well-meaning people want to want to clean headstones, even just their own family's headstones.
33:37
Crista Cowan: And if you even consider for a minute that you might damage it, I hope that would cause people to pause and look for solutions that uh are not going to do any harm at all.
33:47
Crista Cowan: Now, most people aren't gonna go into the business of repairing tombstones.
33:51
Crista Cowan: I certainly wouldn't expect, but every once in a while, I know like I'll go out tromping through a cemetery and I'll find tombstones that are buried or partially buried, and you know, I want to unearth them.
34:02
Crista Cowan: Is that something that you find yourself doing in a typical day of work as well?
34:07
Justin Frost: That's probably the large majority of what I do.
34:11
Justin Frost: Yeah.
34:12
Justin Frost: I the so Midland City Cemetery has told me um anything that is uh uh over a hundred years old and is broken, being covered up, or is dangerous that I'm able to work on as I please.
34:27
Justin Frost: So um I do go around and I find a lot of buried headstones.
34:31
Justin Frost: Some of them are visible, some of them are not visible.
34:35
Justin Frost: Um once you get kind of a trained eye, you can kind of look around and say, Yep, there's a headstone there, or no, there's not one there.
34:43
Justin Frost: Um, and you just go and you poke around a little bit until you find something.
34:46
Crista Cowan: Uh what's the furthest buried you've ever found a tombstone?
34:50
Justin Frost: Oh, geez.
34:51
Justin Frost: Um, I pulled one out of the ground that was nearly two foot in the ground.
34:57
Justin Frost: What?
34:58
Crista Cowan: And how did you know it was there?
35:00
Justin Frost: And it was originally an upright headstone.
35:02
Crista Cowan: Oh my gosh.
35:02
Justin Frost: Um, so there was a small piece of marble that had broken off that was showing at the at the surface.
35:10
Justin Frost: Um, and there was a depression there.
35:12
Justin Frost: And a lot of people will say, well, you know, that depression is just because they they dug there, but that's not always the case.
35:21
Justin Frost: Uh, there is depressions where graves have collapsed before the time of vaults.
35:27
Justin Frost: Um, you know, a lot of times there may be a wood vault, and then the casket was placed, and the wood vault collapses over years of deterioration, um, and all the ground moves into that area and it creates this depression.
35:41
Justin Frost: Well, more often than not, that depression is actually where the headstone is laying.
35:48
Justin Frost: With that piece of marble showing in that depression, I assumed that there had to be something there.
35:54
Justin Frost: So I started to probe, and I actually found the base for the headstone that was only about six inches deep.
36:02
Justin Frost: And I said, Well, there's a base here, there has to be a headstone here.
36:06
Justin Frost: So I started probing for that and and digging, and I ended up finding it.
36:11
Justin Frost: And I assumed that I couldn't have been far from the the top of the casket when I finally found that headstone.
36:18
Crista Cowan: Right, two feet down?
36:19
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
36:20
Crista Cowan: And then and then the amount of cleaning that has to take place, of course, when something has been buried that deep for that long, right?
36:28
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
36:31
Crista Cowan: Um, do tombstones ever end up in places they don't belong?
36:36
Justin Frost: Absolutely.
36:37
Crista Cowan: Tell me about that.
36:39
Justin Frost: Um, so kind of a kind of something that people don't hear a lot about is uh marble was a very sought-after material uh back in the the late 1800s, early 1900s, and and if there was a a stone or a piece of a stone that was small enough that somebody could grab and walk off with, they would take that piece of stone and make something else into it, or make it into something else.
37:07
Justin Frost: Um sometimes, and I don't know why, headstones seem to just come out of the woodwork.
37:16
Justin Frost: You'll you'll find somebody that's clearing a piece of their property, and they'll call me and say, Hey, I found a headstone in my backyard.
37:25
Justin Frost: Um and a lot of times we can figure out where it belongs.
37:31
Justin Frost: Uh, sometimes you can't.
37:32
Justin Frost: Really, if you get back before uh 1870 in Midland County, it's it's really hard to find out where it belongs.
37:40
Justin Frost: But uh there's things like that that happen.
37:43
Justin Frost: Uh, I don't know why, but people seem to just walk out the cemetery and walk off with a headstone.
37:49
Justin Frost: Um, but I would say the most common thing around here is cemeteries were a lot of times put on hills, and they were a lot of times put next to rivers on hills.
38:02
Justin Frost: Um, and with the flooding that we've had for the last you know 150 years, sometimes the banks of those rivers will get washed out and headstones will end up down at the bottom of the hill.
38:14
Justin Frost: So um that's pretty much as crazy as it gets around here.
38:20
Justin Frost: Um I I had a friend that that bought a piece of property, and and the people that lived there before had semi-trailers and stuff parked all over the property, and they started cleaning it up, and she found a headstone.
38:33
Justin Frost: Um it was for a World War II veteran, so yeah.
38:39
Crista Cowan: That's crazy when you think about like people walking off with headstones.
38:43
Crista Cowan: I don't I just can't even imagine, right?
38:46
Justin Frost: But yeah, it's you wouldn't you don't hear a lot about it, yeah.
38:52
Justin Frost: But um, you do every once in a while you'll see a headstone on eBay for sale.
38:56
Justin Frost: A friend of mine just found two headstones on eBay for sale.
38:59
Justin Frost: Um, a friend of mine downstate was involved in returning a headstone that had been used for years to make fudge on, and nobody had ever flipped it over and realized that it was a headstone.
39:12
Justin Frost: Um, so yeah, there's a there's a lot of of crazy stories out there.
39:18
Crista Cowan: It sounds like it.
39:19
Crista Cowan: So you started you started in Midland with your family cemetery, you've kind of expanded now.
39:25
Crista Cowan: What's the furthest afield you've gone to to work in a cemetery?
39:30
Justin Frost: So uh I would say the furthest I've gone um to work on someone else's family's headstone would uh be Athens, Michigan.
39:41
Crista Cowan: Okay.
39:42
Justin Frost: How far is that from you?
39:43
Justin Frost: That's almost three hours.
39:46
Justin Frost: Uh it's right down near the Indiana border.
39:50
Justin Frost: Um to work on my family, I've gone to uh Baton Rouge, Louisiana, um Denham Springs, Louisiana, which is just a little Farther south from Baton Rouge, uh Greensburg, Louisiana.
40:05
Justin Frost: A lot of Louisiana.
40:08
Crista Cowan: And cemeteries in Louisiana are a whole different thing.
40:11
Justin Frost: Absolutely.
40:12
Justin Frost: Yeah.
40:13
Justin Frost: Yep.
40:14
Crista Cowan: Well, and and talk to me a little bit about that.
40:16
Crista Cowan: Like when you think about cemeteries in different places, like you know, Michigan, I suspect, has its own kind of like biological growth.
40:24
Crista Cowan: It has its own kind of soil that things are buried in.
40:26
Crista Cowan: When you get to Louisiana, a lot of the cemeteries are above ground because of the high water table.
40:31
Crista Cowan: There's some different problems that they encounter there elsewhere.
40:35
Crista Cowan: Like what does that look like?
40:38
Justin Frost: Uh so I can speak to Louisiana.
40:40
Justin Frost: Um, when I went there and worked on my family's monuments there, there's two things that stick out to me the most.
40:49
Justin Frost: Uh the one is the soil type.
40:52
Justin Frost: Um, in in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana, which is just outside of Baton Rouge, uh, a lot of my family is buried in a very small cemetery.
41:00
Justin Frost: Uh, it's very swampy around that area, and there's a uh red clay there that uh stains everything.
41:08
Justin Frost: It's and it's very sticky and wet.
41:13
Justin Frost: Um so when I went there to work on my family's headstones, my uh great-great-grandfather, who had been a ninth Louisiana infantryman in the Civil War, his headstone was leaning forward on almost a 45-degree angle.
41:28
Justin Frost: And I thought, well, I've straightened a lot of Civil War headstones in Michigan.
41:33
Justin Frost: I can straighten this one.
41:35
Justin Frost: And uh I think it would have been a lot easier if I would have had a boom truck or a crane there because it was just stuck.
41:44
Justin Frost: Um, and I was able to get it straightened up, but it took a long time.
41:48
Justin Frost: Um, and then the the biological growth that they get down there is very different uh from what we get in Michigan because it's like a subtropical climate, you know, 90% of the year.
42:02
Justin Frost: Um the uh the algae and the the lichen that they grow down there is very, very hard to get rid of.
42:10
Justin Frost: Um, it's very sticky and thick, just because of all the humidity and and the different types of pollen that probably create it.
42:18
Crista Cowan: So and so does D2 work on that as well, or and it just takes longer, or do you have to do something different?
42:25
Justin Frost: Yeah, uh, so on those, because the climate is so much warmer, uh, D2 is much more active for a longer period of time.
42:36
Justin Frost: Uh, you know, the the um recommended temperature to use D2 is is above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's above 45 degrees Fahrenheit almost all year long down there, unless they get a couple cold days.
42:50
Justin Frost: Um, so I have some family that lives not far from there, and after I had gone and treated those headstones and cleaned them, I asked them to go and and check on them.
43:00
Justin Frost: And a year later, they looked almost just as good as anything I would clean here in Michigan.
43:05
Justin Frost: Um, the problem is the growth seems to come back faster there.
43:10
Justin Frost: Uh but D2 is is an amazing product.
43:14
Justin Frost: I haven't found anything that it that it won't biological-wise that it won't take care of.
43:19
Justin Frost: Um, there is a a little trick when you have some thicker black growth that you can spray the stone down with D2 and then put a trash bag over it and put a bungee cord around the bottom, and that will keep the D2 active for longer.
43:34
Justin Frost: Um, but uh, but it's it's really just an amazing product and uh and it works on everything.
43:42
Crista Cowan: I bet you've got all sorts of tricks up your sleeve.
43:44
Justin Frost: I do, yeah.
43:45
Crista Cowan: If people want to follow you and watch the work that you're doing, where's the best place for them to go?
43:50
Justin Frost: Uh I've got a Facebook page.
43:52
Justin Frost: Um, that's where I I direct most people now.
43:55
Justin Frost: Um, TikTok, YouTube, and what's your what's your handle there?
44:00
Justin Frost: Uh past preservation on all of them.
44:03
Crista Cowan: Perfect.
44:03
Crista Cowan: So before we wrap up, I would just love to know do you have a current passion project that you're working on?
44:10
Justin Frost: Not right now.
44:11
Justin Frost: It's winter here.
44:11
Justin Frost: We've got like four inches of snow.
44:14
Justin Frost: Already.
44:15
Justin Frost: Wow.
44:15
Justin Frost: But I do have uh non-headstone wise.
44:19
Justin Frost: Um, right now we are I'm working with a friend of mine uh from Traverse City who is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, and we are working to get a piece of legislation pushed through in the uh Michigan House to dedicate a mile and a half stretch of highway to the Company K, uh first Michigan sharpshooters veterans that were all Native American and all had to volunteer after almost three years of being told that they couldn't fight in the Civil War.
44:52
Crista Cowan: Um Justin, I may I may need you to come back on the podcast and tell us that story.
44:57
Justin Frost: Hey, I will come back anytime.
45:00
Justin Frost: Anytime.
45:01
Crista Cowan: That sounds like a story I need to hear.
45:03
Justin Frost: Yes, it's and it's it really is a fantastic story.
45:07
Justin Frost: The the guys in that company dealt with some very horrendous things, um, both at home and in the battlefield.
45:16
Justin Frost: So great.
45:18
Crista Cowan: Well, I love I love that you have something you can work on when everything is buried under feet so feet of snow.
45:24
Justin Frost: Yeah.
45:25
Crista Cowan: As you as you think about, you know, Leonard and your roots in Michigan and the way that you have been able to contribute not just to preserving your own family stories, but really, and and not even just the stories of Midland, but the stories of what it sounds like a lot of Michiganders, is that what you call yourselves?
45:44
Justin Frost: Michiganders.
45:45
Crista Cowan: Michiganders.
45:46
Crista Cowan: Thank you for correcting my pronunciation.
45:49
Crista Cowan: What does it what does it mean to you to be from Michigan?
45:53
Justin Frost: Oh, geez.
45:54
Justin Frost: Um, it's I'm very fortunate.
46:01
Crista Cowan: And you're raising the next generation of Michiganders, it sounds like.
46:04
Crista Cowan: And you're raising them to appreciate not just the beauty of the land you live in, but the history and what made it so special for you.
46:12
Justin Frost: We really are wonderful people here in Michigan.
46:15
Justin Frost: I don't know why we get such a bad rap.
46:19
Crista Cowan: Well, thank you so much.
46:20
Crista Cowan: I so appreciate your time and coming on and telling us not just your stories, but also giving us all a little bit of uh advice on how best to approach cemeteries as we work on them with our own family history.
46:34
Justin Frost: Absolutely.
46:34
Justin Frost: Thank you for having me.
46:37
Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.