Justin Frost: 0:00

This is my iteration of an obituary for these people. It's telling their story, telling their lives. 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.

Crista Cowan: 0:21

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. 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. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. Genealogists love a good cemetery. 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. They just feel like a place where the stories are abundant and waiting to be discovered. My guest today is Justin Frost, and Justin Frost is not your average genealogist. 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. But he's turned his passion for family stories into a hobby and a side gig, which I think is amazing. So you're gonna hear today all about Justin's work in cemeteries. 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. But this is the perfect time of year to learn more about the cemeteries before you dive headfirst into them. 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. 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. I learned how to pronounce that word on this episode from Justin. So as we continue our march across America with America 250, enjoy my conversation with Michigander Justin Frost. I would love to get to know you a little bit better. Uh tell me a little bit about who you are, your background, your profession, your your roots.

Justin Frost: 2:58

Um, well, my name's Justin Frost. I was born here in Midland. I've lived here all my life, uh, except for about eight months. Um I uh have my family has a long history here. We've been here since 1866 uh in Midland County. Um I actually work a full-time job at the chemical plant uh here in Midland. And I do this gravestone restoration work on the side. Um I have two kids. They've been married for 12 years. 12 years, yep. Uh it's hard to remember sometimes.

Crista Cowan: 3:39

I would love to hear the story of how you and your wife met.

Justin Frost: 3:42

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. Um and then probably I don't know, three years later we started dating. Uh, we were in high school, uh summer of 2004. Um, and we've been together ever since.

Crista Cowan: 4:17

That's amazing. High school sweethearts. You don't hear that very much anymore.

Justin Frost: 4:21

Yeah, in fact, uh, I'll even show you this. This is our prom photo.

Crista Cowan: 4:27

High school prom, that's adorable. And what's her name?

Justin Frost: 4:31

Uh her name is Cassandra. Everybody calls her Cassie.

Crista Cowan: 4:35

Cute. And is she also like originally from Michigan?

Justin Frost: 4:39

Uh yeah. Yep. Her family, her family's been in Midley County for a really long time, too. Uh probably 1870s.

Crista Cowan: 4:47

So your children are gonna get it from both sides.

Justin Frost: 4:50

Yes, yeah.

Crista Cowan: 4:52

That's amazing. I love that. Well, um, tell me a little bit about like what stories you grew up with about your family history. Was there was that or did you come from a storytelling family at all?

Justin Frost: 5:04

So uh kind of. Um, my dad's side of the family I didn't really know anything about. Um, my mom's side of the family is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Uh, so I did get to learn a little bit about that side of the family when I was younger. Someone in our family had done a very extensive family tree, uh, tracked us back to France. Um, and so I I learned a little bit about that side of the family. Of course, there was a lot of things the family didn't like to talk about. Um, and there's a lot of things that the family doesn't know because they never talked about those things. Um, so really into my adult life, I had no idea where my Michigan family came from. Um, and that's kind of where my story starts. Uh in 2016, my grandparents had their fifth 60th wedding anniversary. 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. And uh I thought while I was there, I thought, you know, not too many people hit their 60th wedding anniversary. Um, my grandpa spent 35 years working in a chemical plant. Uh, he'll be 91 this December. Uh but when I realized that, I realized that I wasn't gonna have my grandparents around for a very long time. Um, they're not gonna be around forever. So I decided at that point that I wanted to learn some family history from his side of the family. 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. And and it was really surprising to me how much stuff he knew. And I said, How do you know all of this stuff? 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. Well, all of my grandpa's sisters did that. 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. 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. Um, and it just I just I wanted to know more. Um, my grandpa told me that my third great grandfather came to Saginaw um in 1863. Uh likely was trying to avoid fighting the Civil War. Uh, he had three brothers that fought, and one other brother that went to Canada. 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.

Crista Cowan: 8:26

Where did he come from?

Justin Frost: 8:27

So Oswego County, New York. Uh okay, specifically Richland Station, New York. 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. 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. Um, so I made a trip over there. It was uh November of 2019, and I found his family uh monument, but he didn't have a headstone. He didn't have his own headstone. 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. 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. So I started doing more research on him and found really his origin story. 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. Um, and that's where that family line stops. I've been searching for nine years now and haven't found even a scrap of evidence on that family line. So it's I'm kind of at the point where I've stopped.

Crista Cowan: 10:04

So this so this ancestor who came to Michigan, what was his name?

Justin Frost: 10:08

Leonard Frost.

Crista Cowan: 10:10

And Leonard Frost came, you said, in 1863.

Justin Frost: 10:14

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 10:14

And did he meet his wife there or did he come with her?

Justin Frost: 10:18

He met her in Saginaw City.

Crista Cowan: 10:20

Okay, and do you know how she got to Michigan?

Justin Frost: 10:22

Um, so her family is actually from St. Clair, uh St. Clair County, uh, Michigan, and they have been in Michigan since 1841. Um, I don't know where they came from. 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.

Crista Cowan: 10:50

Yeah, and and what was his first name again?

Justin Frost: 10:53

His first name was Leonard.

Crista Cowan: 10:55

Leonard, and what was her name?

Justin Frost: 10:57

Her name was Eunice.

Crista Cowan: 10:58

Okay, so Leonard and Eunice meet in Midland County and get married.

Justin Frost: 11:02

How many in Midland Saginaw? Saginaw City.

Crista Cowan: 11:05

Saginaw, okay.

Justin Frost: 11:07

Yep. And they got married in 1865 in Saginaw City.

Crista Cowan: 11:12

Okay, and then how many children did they have?

Justin Frost: 11:14

Three sons and two daughters.

Crista Cowan: 11:18

So five kids, did all five kids stay in the area?

Justin Frost: 11:21

Uh yes, yes, they did. In fact, uh, I was fortunate enough. 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. They they did a lot of work around Midland, digging basements and uh working on corduroy roads and things like that. And and he graded roads when they needed to put a new road in.

Crista Cowan: 11:55

Um okay, what's a core what's a corduroy road?

Justin Frost: 11:59

So a corduroy road is is what they did in a spot where it's very sandy, loose sand. We have a we have a ton of loose sand here in Midland County. 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. So the road had a solid bottom.

Crista Cowan: 12:21

Okay.

Justin Frost: 12:22

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. So yeah.

Crista Cowan: 12:39

Is it ever amazing to you? 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. 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.

Justin Frost: 12:57

It really isn't.

Crista Cowan: 12:58

Depending on the length of those generations, some people are not that far removed. 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. And I love that you took the time to visit your uncle and your grandfather and collect those stories. So you went to the cemetery. Um, there was a family, you said a family monument.

Justin Frost: 13:23

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. And uh it was November, so I had time to figure out how I could remedy that. Um I didn't know anything about headstone cleaning. I had seen uh on the news this guy named Andrew Loomish, uh, who is known as the Good Cemetarian uh down in Florida. And I thought, you know, I think I remember seeing somebody cleaning headstones before. 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. And uh so I I went on the internet and I searched as much as I could, and there was a lot of videos. There was some information, but it was really scarce. It was hard to really tell what was right and what was wrong. 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. Um it was later that year I found a training class uh downstate, about almost three-hour drive from my house. Um, and I went to that training class and I learned more about cleaning headstones, and uh I also learned how to repair headstones. Um, so that just drove me farther into what would become a uh a real uh obsession.

Crista Cowan: 15:22

And uh and all of this just stemmed from wanting to take care of your own family's monument, right?

Justin Frost: 15:28

Right. So I I took care of that monument. 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. And and of course, at first I did it all on volunteer uh basis. 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. 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. Um, so that's what kind of gave the birth to my business was was that that idea.

Crista Cowan: 16:42

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. Like, what does Cassie think about all of this while this is happening?

Justin Frost: 16:52

She thinks she thinks I'm insane. Um I think that she's looked at me more than once and said, You are crazy. You know, I think that she has a certain amount of appreci appreciation for it. Um, it does keep me busy, keeps me engaged in something that makes me happy. And uh, and I've introduced this to my children now. You know, my my kids are uh my daughter will be eight next week, and my son will be 12 in August. 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. 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. Um, and I would say, Hey, you guys want to go play with your friends at daycare? Or do you want to hang out with me for the day? I'm going to the cemetery. Well, they wanted to go to the cemetery. So well done, dad. Well done. Not only my obsession now, but I share it with my kids.

Crista Cowan: 18:02

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. And now you've made this business out of it. But as you as you do this and continue, I suspect, to volunteer in a lot of ways as well.

Justin Frost: 18:20

Absolutely.

Crista Cowan: 18:22

So as you've gotten into this work, I suspect you've caught the attention of a lot of historical societies, genealogical societies. You maybe worked with some of them. Like what how do you work with those organizations? Is it just going out and speaking or teaching, or is there more to that?

Justin Frost: 18:36

I so I I have done a lot of speaking engagement. Um, I did uh a presentation in Frank and Muse for the uh Michigan Association of Municipal Cemeteries. Uh that was that was a pretty big deal for me. Um I have had a lot of people downstate around Ann Arbor. 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. They they smashed headstones, they picked them up and moved them. Um, and we're talking whole headstones as big as me in pieces this big. Um, so I have I have reached a few societies like that, um, genealogical societies. I do a lot of speaking engagements for them. 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. Yeah, I did not know you could do that. Um, so it's it's great to get that interaction with the community too.

Crista Cowan: 19:54

Yeah. Well, who would who would have thought, young Justin, that you would be cleaning up and fixing tombstones? Right, who even considered it?

Justin Frost: 20:02

So many people tell me you are so young, but have such an old soul.

Crista Cowan: 20:08

I love that. 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?

Justin Frost: 20:17

I do get pretty obsessed with other people. 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. Um, I find that a lot of people came from New York. Um, I find that there was a lot of uh people that came here for lumbering. Um, and then later on, especially after the Civil War, people came here for farming. Um and uh the you know, the whole homestead act thing really opened up a lot of free land here for people. 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. 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.

Crista Cowan: 21:44

I love that. And and when you think about it, right? Like we talked earlier about the connection between you and your grandfather, back to your great-great-grandfather. This is a connection between you and the people in this community where your family has lived for generations. 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?

Justin Frost: 22:18

Right, yes. So we're not very many people here in in 1866. Um and I I do find uh when I'm researching different people that sometimes their family tree will bleed into mine. So somehow we're a distant cousin in relation or or something like that, you know.

Crista Cowan: 22:37

So is there a story that's just stuck with you that you've discovered?

Justin Frost: 22:43

Yeah, actually, there's one that I I love to tell. Um, there's a a guy uh buried here in Midland. I found his headstone. 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. And uh I said, you know what, one day I'm gonna be confident enough to fix that. 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. I I always look for descendants of these people um to talk to before I do any of this stuff. 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. Uh, the monument was really weird because it it just said our father on it, and that was it. 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. The guy's name was Haston M. Ellsworth. 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. M. Ellsworth. So, in doing the research of Haston, I found that he came from New York. Um, he was born in the 1820s. He uh got in trouble in New York, and he was arrested and imprisoned uh because he accepted stolen goods. So he was in prison for three years. He wrote a letter to an attorney. The attorney wrote a letter to a judge, and he ended up getting pardoned and released from prison. So then he comes to Michig Michigan, and uh he ends up in Saginaw City, where this is before Midland was even a village. Uh, there was maybe 20 people living in Midland County at the time. 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. So that intrigued me. 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. Um in doing some more research in him, I found out that he became a very prominent person of Midland. 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. 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. 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. Ellsworth as the second sheriff of Midland County. So I was able to talk to the sheriff and get the record uh changed and corrected um to say Haston M. Ellsworth.

Crista Cowan: 26:51

That's amazing. Oh wow, that's really incredible.

Justin Frost: 26:55

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.

Crista Cowan: 27:03

So that's incredible. So you're not just restoring tombstones, it sounds like you're also restoring people's names and stories and lives to themselves, right?

Justin Frost: 27:12

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. So I did an interview um two years ago, and somebody said, What do you get out of this? And and I said, You know, this is my iteration of an obituary for these people. It's telling their story, telling their lives. 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.

Crista Cowan: 27:57

You mentioned earlier that you've looked for descendants of the individuals whose tombstones you're cleaning or repairing. Have you ever had an experience or a story connected to one of those descendants?

Justin Frost: 28:07

I did have one, uh, and it actually involves my wife's family. 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. And uh she said that my wife's third great grandfather was her great-great-grandfather's brother. 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. 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. So uh it was interesting to get that message from her. I ended up uh connecting her with my father-in-law, who knows a lot of their family history. Um, some of it he doesn't because I tell him stories about his ancestry. Uh, and he says, Wow, I never knew that. But uh it was kind of neat to make that connection for her so that she could learn more about her extended family.

Crista Cowan: 29:37

Such a gift. I love that so much. So I would love to get a little technical for a minute. Um, just for people who are listening to your story and inspired by what you've done. If they want to start cleaning, let's start with cleaning, not repairing, if they are to start cleaning tombstones. 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. 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. Can can you talk to us a little bit about just some basics that everybody should know?

Justin Frost: 30:18

Absolutely. Uh, I always tell people when they call me and ask me how to start. I always tell people that there is absolutely no substitute for hands-on training. Um, hands-on training is is the best way to start because you physically have someone showing you exactly how they do it. 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. Um, there may even be some things that I do that that uh would be construed as not great. Um, but yes, the hands-on training is is the best. Now, back to my story when I started, the information was very hard to find. 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. Um so the first rule of thumb is that you don't want to do any harm to the headstone. 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. Um there these older headstones, marble and uh limestone will will sugar, they get very fragile. 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. So that's the most important thing is do no harm, no damage to the stone. 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. Uh D2 Biological Solution is America's number one selling headstone cleaner. Um there's also another material called Prosico Revive. Those two I can vouch for. I've used them both. I think they both work great. Other than that, you want to use brushes that are very soft. Uh, you want to use brushes that are natural fiber, they'll wear uh before the stone will wear. 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. Uh those are very in some cases caustic or leave a salt residue behind. 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. Um so, like I said before, this this is all why the training is is so very important.

Crista Cowan: 33:28

Yeah, well said. Thank you for giving us that little bit of insight. I think a lot of well-meaning people want to want to clean headstones, even just their own family's headstones. 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. Now, most people aren't gonna go into the business of repairing tombstones. 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. Is that something that you find yourself doing in a typical day of work as well?

Justin Frost: 34:07

That's probably the large majority of what I do. Yeah. 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. So um I do go around and I find a lot of buried headstones. Some of them are visible, some of them are not visible. 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. Um, and you just go and you poke around a little bit until you find something.

Crista Cowan: 34:46

Uh what's the furthest buried you've ever found a tombstone?

Justin Frost: 34:50

Oh, geez. Um, I pulled one out of the ground that was nearly two foot in the ground. What?

Crista Cowan: 34:58

And how did you know it was there?

Justin Frost: 35:00

And it was originally an upright headstone.

Crista Cowan: 35:02

Oh my gosh.

Justin Frost: 35:02

Um, so there was a small piece of marble that had broken off that was showing at the at the surface. Um, and there was a depression there. 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. Uh, there is depressions where graves have collapsed before the time of vaults. 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. Well, more often than not, that depression is actually where the headstone is laying. With that piece of marble showing in that depression, I assumed that there had to be something there. So I started to probe, and I actually found the base for the headstone that was only about six inches deep. And I said, Well, there's a base here, there has to be a headstone here. So I started probing for that and and digging, and I ended up finding it. And I assumed that I couldn't have been far from the the top of the casket when I finally found that headstone.

Crista Cowan: 36:18

Right, two feet down? That's amazing. 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? That's amazing. Um, do tombstones ever end up in places they don't belong?

Justin Frost: 36:36

Absolutely.

Crista Cowan: 36:37

Tell me about that.

Justin Frost: 36:39

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. Um sometimes, and I don't know why, headstones seem to just come out of the woodwork. 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. Um and a lot of times we can figure out where it belongs. Uh, sometimes you can't. Really, if you get back before uh 1870 in Midland County, it's it's really hard to find out where it belongs. But uh there's things like that that happen. Uh, I don't know why, but people seem to just walk out the cemetery and walk off with a headstone. 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. 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. So um that's pretty much as crazy as it gets around here. 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. Um it was for a World War II veteran, so yeah.

Crista Cowan: 38:39

That's crazy when you think about like people walking off with headstones. I don't I just can't even imagine, right?

Justin Frost: 38:46

But yeah, it's you wouldn't you don't hear a lot about it, yeah. But um, you do every once in a while you'll see a headstone on eBay for sale. A friend of mine just found two headstones on eBay for sale. 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. Um, so yeah, there's a there's a lot of of crazy stories out there.

Crista Cowan: 39:18

It sounds like it. So you started you started in Midland with your family cemetery, you've kind of expanded now. What's the furthest afield you've gone to to work in a cemetery?

Justin Frost: 39:30

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.

Crista Cowan: 39:41

Okay.

Justin Frost: 39:42

How far is that from you? That's almost three hours. Uh it's right down near the Indiana border. 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. A lot of Louisiana.

Crista Cowan: 40:08

And cemeteries in Louisiana are a whole different thing.

Justin Frost: 40:11

Absolutely. Yeah. Yep.

Crista Cowan: 40:14

Well, and and talk to me a little bit about that. Like when you think about cemeteries in different places, like you know, Michigan, I suspect, has its own kind of like biological growth. It has its own kind of soil that things are buried in. When you get to Louisiana, a lot of the cemeteries are above ground because of the high water table. There's some different problems that they encounter there elsewhere. Like what does that look like?

Justin Frost: 40:38

Uh so I can speak to Louisiana. Um, when I went there and worked on my family's monuments there, there's two things that stick out to me the most. Uh the one is the soil type. 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. Uh, it's very swampy around that area, and there's a uh red clay there that uh stains everything. It's and it's very sticky and wet. 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. And I thought, well, I've straightened a lot of Civil War headstones in Michigan. I can straighten this one. 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. Um, and I was able to get it straightened up, but it took a long time. 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. Um the uh the algae and the the lichen that they grow down there is very, very hard to get rid of. Um, it's very sticky and thick, just because of all the humidity and and the different types of pollen that probably create it.

Crista Cowan: 42:18

So and so does D2 work on that as well, or and it just takes longer, or do you have to do something different?

Justin Frost: 42:25

Yeah, uh, so on those, because the climate is so much warmer, uh, D2 is much more active for a longer period of time. 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. 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. And a year later, they looked almost just as good as anything I would clean here in Michigan. Um, the problem is the growth seems to come back faster there. Uh but D2 is is an amazing product. I haven't found anything that it that it won't biological-wise that it won't take care of. 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. Um, but uh, but it's it's really just an amazing product and uh and it works on everything.

Crista Cowan: 43:42

I bet you've got all sorts of tricks up your sleeve.

Justin Frost: 43:44

I do, yeah.

Crista Cowan: 43:45

If people want to follow you and watch the work that you're doing, where's the best place for them to go?

Justin Frost: 43:50

Uh I've got a Facebook page. Um, that's where I I direct most people now. Um, TikTok, YouTube, and what's your what's your handle there? Uh past preservation on all of them.

Crista Cowan: 44:03

Perfect. So before we wrap up, I would just love to know do you have a current passion project that you're working on?

Justin Frost: 44:10

Not right now. It's winter here. We've got like four inches of snow. Already. Wow. But I do have uh non-headstone wise. 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.

Crista Cowan: 44:52

Um Justin, I may I may need you to come back on the podcast and tell us that story.

Justin Frost: 44:57

Hey, I will come back anytime. Anytime.

Crista Cowan: 45:01

That sounds like a story I need to hear.

Justin Frost: 45:03

Yes, it's and it's it really is a fantastic story. The the guys in that company dealt with some very horrendous things, um, both at home and in the battlefield. So great.

Crista Cowan: 45:18

Well, I love I love that you have something you can work on when everything is buried under feet so feet of snow.

Justin Frost: 45:24

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 45:25

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?

Justin Frost: 45:44

Michiganders.

Crista Cowan: 45:45

Michiganders. Thank you for correcting my pronunciation. What does it what does it mean to you to be from Michigan?

Justin Frost: 45:53

Oh, geez. Um, it's I'm very fortunate.

Crista Cowan: 46:01

And you're raising the next generation of Michiganders, it sounds like. 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.

Justin Frost: 46:12

We really are wonderful people here in Michigan. I don't know why we get such a bad rap.

Crista Cowan: 46:19

Well, thank you so much. 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.

Justin Frost: 46:34

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Crista Cowan: 46:37

Studio sponsored by Ancestry.