Judy Sgambati uses a dirt probe gifted to her by the Lake Milton Historical Society’s Matthew Wagner to seek out other headstones at the Reichard Farm Cemetery in Milton Township. Up until Wagner’s gift, Sgambati was using a metal garden shepherd’s hook.

MILTON TOWNSHIP — When Judy Sgambati would play in the woods behind her residence as a young girl, she didn’t think anything of the gravestones that riddled the deep and endless greenery.

“My family has owned property out here. I mean, I grew up out here, and the cemetery obviously always has been there,” Sgambati said. “The cemetery was in the woods, so we would go up there at night and scare each other, and then I think sometime around the 1980s, a Boy Scout troop came out and cleared the land.”

In June of 2023, she and her children came up from Columbus and spent an entire week in the area.

“During that week, I kept going up to the cemetery and trying to read the headstones, but they were so bad, I wasn’t getting too far. I asked people in Lake Milton Estates about the cemetery and who originally owned the land, but no one seemed to know much. During that week, I found the Lake Milton Historical Society Facebook page. We went back to Columbus, and I decided I was going to find out about everyone in the cemetery, create family trees for them and write a little ‘book’ about them for Lake Milton Estates,” Sgambati said.

After doing all that research and realizing that the cemetery had a lot of local historical significance and had unrecognized veterans in it, she spent the winter learning all about cemetery restoration.

Sgambati has been restoring the headstones of the Reichard Farm Cemetery over the course of the past year, discovering some of the lost parts of American history along the way. She has found the gravestones of soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and the French and Indian War through the restoration process, although some of them have served in multiple wars.

Out of all the gravestones, however, the one that cuts closest for Sgambati was that of Revolutionary War veteran Frederick Byers, who founded Fredericksburg, a once-prosperous town now buried under Lake Milton’s waters.

Sgambati, who was adopted, was working on the Byers family tree when she began work on her own biological one. It was after making a post on the Lake Milton Historical Society’s Facebook group last August seeking descendants of the Byers that she made a shocking connection.

“I’m down about two generations with Frederick Byers’ family tree and I’m off about four or five generations on my own biological family tree. And all of a sudden, the same set of names shows up. Now this is like 2 in the morning and I’m like, ‘oh, how did I mix up these two families?’,” Sgambati said. “I don’t know why I made a mistake, so I start deleting stuff on both trees and I redo the Byers’ tree and then I need to make sure I have sources for everything. So I have census data, I have marriage records and I end up in the same place. Frederick and Catherine Byers are my fifth great-grandparents.”

Sgambati said her mom noted her obsession with the cemetery, and the desire to always be around it started as a child. Knowing what she knows now, Sgambati said she finally understands why.

Part of what has made discovering the stones difficult is the clay-rich soil of the site, which feels like concrete because of the recent drought, Sgambati said. From there, she said they have to figure out how they’re going to get the equipment to safely bring them up.

Cleaning them is also no easy task.

Sgambati showed a stone she had been cleaning since the beginning of June, with some dirt and mold caked on it. However, she said she also understands she’s dealing with 200 years worth of dirt.

Sgambati said she’s been funding the restoration project herself, and she hasn’t asked for donations yet. Her biggest expense at the moment has been purchasing D/2, a biological solution for removing stains that cemeteries such as the Arlington National Cemetery have used on their gravestones.

Sgambati plans to get the headstones properly fixed, as some of them are broken, damaged or ruined and the longer they lay flat, the more damage they’ll end up taking.

“Unfortunately, we have one that is unfavorable. We can’t move it, we really can’t even clean it because it just starts crumbling and then quite a few of them, you just can’t read anymore,” Sgambati said. “Probably never will be able to read them again, but some of them will be almost brand new.”

Sgambati said she surrounded them with gravel to protect them from the lawn mower and draw moisture away, until they can be placed upright. She hopes to find a more permanent solution soon.

While Sgambati and her daughters LeAnna and Makayla have rediscovered and cleaned 14 headstones so far, with Mindy Gibbs and her daughter, Ari, joining them over the past week, she estimates an additional 10 that could still be out there. Because of vandalism however, some stones could be lost for good.

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