Unlike many, the elegance of Lydia's marker has not been lost with time. In the past 2'BD years, Young has uncovered 23 cemeteries, half of them without any known ownership, within the city limits. He has compiled a book of photographs that chronicles many old gravestones and the sad conditions around them. Young estimates that the city has between 60,000 and 70,000 grave sites. With the help of his wife, Mary Jo, Young launched the cemetery conservation project because he wants to preserve precious history.
Graves can provide information that exists nowhere else.
To his surprise, Young said, he has found some colonial-era graves that are in remarkably good shape. His goal is to generate enough interest to start refurbishing some cemeteries, monitoring them against vandals and cataloging them so that families can track their ancestors. He and his wife and a few other volunteers have created a computer database with some 8,000 graves registered. Century-old gravestones at Miry Brook Cemetery await the tender ministrations of the Danbury Gravestone Project. It's a project that needed to be done and, silly me, I decided to do it,'' said Young.