The memorial for Elizbeth G. Cooper, Consort of Jonathan Cooper.
COOPER, Elizabeth G., "consort of Jonathan Cooper, who departed this life Feb the 14th 1858. Aged 63 years, 11 months and 14 days.
Compiled by Mary Bob McClain who descends from the brother of this Cooper family. Photo by Wayne Austin who visited here 13 Jan 2009.
Biology & stone cleaning lesson: Each of the different colors in the face of this stone represent different living substances of mosses and lichens. These must be killed and flushed away to render this stone perfectly clean & readable. While bleach will do it, don't use bleach unless you have about five gallons of water for each stone, and also have time to wait around until the bleach works its magic. Only then use water to flush the debris off. Bleach not washed off will over time break down and form feeding matter to the lichens & mosses and actually make the problem worse. Any cleaning that works well such as commercially available biowashes cannot be used more often than about every 5 years or long term harm to the stone can occur. There is also a natural color change, usually darkening or in some stones lightning, called patination that represents the change over 10s of hundreds years. That is always to be left alone. It is a natural hardening and color change to the surface of the stone which helps protect the stone to some degree. The harder stones such as flint take thousands of years to fully patinate and one can easily tell an original carved artifact from a one that is formed more recently by judging the patination level.
