St. Boniface Maryhill "Old Walled
Cemetery Project"
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Over  the past 20 + years I have made it a ritual to spend time at the "Old Walled Cemetery" making repairs and leveling friends and relatives markers.
The last few years have been very tough on the cemetery with a number of the larger monuments becoming unlevel and will soon need to be take one at a time and leveled up,  repointed where all of the stone parts meet etc. I have done the mortar work on about 20 stones to replace the cross which  had fallen from the top.
 This year (2017) about 4 days was spent doing different jobs from  replacing  crosses to leveling tablet markers.
 Around 20 of the tablet markers had to be leveled up which was completed between Nov. 24 and Dec 5 2017 , also I was able to re-set 4 of the stone cross back on top of their monument after a little leveling. There is around 10 more crosses to re-set in the future.
I am presently making a metal holders that will accommodate the small stone markers that used to be attached to about 15 of the iron cross monuments that have fallen off when the bolts and wires holding them in place rusted away. I hope to install these holders spring of 2018
​In the near future (Spring of 2018) I hope to arrange for the monument of Erasmus Bitschey to be leveled and the 2 pieces that are presently beside the base reassembled
QR Scan project; I am pleased to say I am now able to create a QR image that can be placed on or near the cemetery monument which will allow a person to simply scan the QR image with their smart phone or tablet and be taken to a web page that can contain everything from history of the person, pictures and even video if it is available. This will now allow for a Cemetery Tour, or simply make the visit to the cemetery more interesting and most important highlight the memory of the person you are visiting, Each and every stone you see around you has a story to tell. Go ahead and give it a try on these QR scans. Ron Schmuck
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If you need help to restore your family or friends marker I am only two pleased to assist in any way I can. There are several excellent books available on the internet on how to "Correctly" restore and maintain cemetery monuments and a coarse is offered on restoration and care of monuments etc.
  
*Also if you want to make a Family History web site like this one (which is on the web for FREE), just let me know.
* Question on restoration are welcome. and soon a store so you can purchase the hard to find "Correct" restoration items. (See Restoration supplies under "More" on home page/
*Cemetary map and list of Schmuck graves at the bottom of page.pictures.
*ManyTHANKS to Betty Brohman & Susan Motz for spending many hours cleaning the stones and to
​Diane Strickler who collected the information from the hundreds of stones for future generations.
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 Maryhill "Old walled Cemetery Restoration Project pictures;
All of these pictures were taken at the "Old walled cemetery, Maryhill, some projects take considerable time so if you see pictures further down in the album of the same stone this simply means the project was stopped until the stone dried from laying flat on the ground for years or for restoration to cure etc. Restoration supplies are for sale in our "Restoration supplyStore"
Aug 23 2018  I had noticed a number of monuments were leaning over from the winter frost so had put 2x4 planks behind them so they would not fall over until I had time and the weather was right to do the repairs. The following pictures shows the straightening of Michel Scherrer's monument as well as the instillation of aluminum metal frames I made last winter to hold the many stone name markers that have fallen off of the metal cross grave markers.  Ron Schmuck
                       Restoration work spring 2020
                                             Restoration Aug 2020 and the first restored Lebensbaum
Work continues through Sept 2020
Nov 2020. We have had a wonderful fall and even into mid Nov able to complete the painting of the remaining Black Iron Crosses shown below.
JUNE 2021 Work continues in the OWC with the painting of the French blue" colored crosses. The color was identified by three different companies from paint chips I suppled. Rustolium Co. made the paint for me which is now being used to paint the 25+ Iron Crosses.
Below are some pictures .

July 5 2021; Now all of the Iron Crosses have been painted. with the last of the blue on July 1st. Now my attention goes to restoring the large crucifix in the centre of the cemetery.
This beautiful stone statue was painted some years ago covering the amazing detail for no other reason then to make it all one color and not be bothered to clean it properly, and since then it has been left to simply deteriorate to a state that was a true disgrace.
I have now spent 5 days starting to strip the remaining paint very slowly using a special safe stripper so it litterly takes days to strip down a layer instead of hours as would be the case with wooden furniture. While working in the cemetery over the years I have had different tools disappear from where I set them only moments ago, sometimes they do reappear a few stones away or in one case my entire tool box vanished and was found a week later by the gentleman who cuts the grass over at the east wall. Take a moment to see how Jesus has reversed himself to fit better into my selfie in the picture below :-))  taken July 5 2021. 
​Ron S
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Above picture taken June 2021 as restoration on this monument of the Crucifixion continues
The above Crucifixation monument was completed July 18 2021. I plan on leaving the cross as it presently is. Originally the base was this med grey, Then it and the cross were painted white and finally everything including the corpus was painted black.
​Ron 
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