Restoration work has been completed at the Claus Family Cemetery, located off U.S. Route 6 in Lorain, and has uncovered the remains of five graves, most of which are now intact.

In the small cemetery there are four graves of children and one adult.

Matt Nahorn, Amherst Ward 4 city councilor and member of the Brownhelm Historical Society, says for years only two stones were visible from the adjacent road.

“They all have ties to early families in this area,” Nahorn said. “There were a lot of farms near the cemetery.”

The restoration included locating the missing pieces of each grave, two of the three of which were found by volunteers examining and discovering the preserved gravestones.

It was determined that there was still a fragment of a marble tombstone at the base of the fifth grave, but according to Nahorn, the rest has not yet been found.

Additional renovation included cleaning the exposed stones with a biological cleaning solution called D/2, which helps remove contaminants such as moss, dirt and other contaminants or stains, and requires a minimum of annual spray-on maintenance.

The graves, most of them belonging to children, at the Claus Family Cemetery in Lorain have been restored by volunteers and members of the Brownhelm Historical Society.

They should be almost ready for now,” Nahorn said.

Since the cemetery was located close to many homesteads in the 1806s, it was believed that family members wanted their loved ones to be close to each other, hence the small size of the cemetery.

Nahorn said the graves will remain in those locations so as not to disregard the wishes of those who buried their loved ones there.

“Everyone there is almost related or had a family member who had a farm nearby,” he said. “Because the houses were so close to each other and most of the graves were of very, very young children, you could argue that the family wanted them to be close to each other.”

Nahorn said the children buried there include: William Henry Hirsching, April 15, 1860, to Oct. 17, 1860; Anna Margarita Heideloff, August 10, 1865 to July 31, 1866; Carl H. A. Braun, December 8, 1860 to May 12, 1862; and Armine, an infant whose relatives are in the Claus family, from May 5, 1866 to May 26, 1866.

Lucy Morgan is the only adult buried in the cemetery.

Morgan was 80 years old when she died in 1855 while visiting her family in Ohio from England.

“This tiny cemetery illustrates how infant mortality was a major problem facing first families,” Nahorn said. “Many of the family members buried here were later buried in Brownhelm Cemetery.”

Volunteers also had the opportunity to commemorate and pay tribute to the memory of all those buried at the cemetery.

Nahorn said it was rewarding to be part of the renovation team and complete the project in the same year as Lorain County’s bicentennial.

“As a local historian, I had great satisfaction in being able to learn more about the cemetery and have the stones restored,” he said.

“The staff at our cemetery (Brownhelm Historical Association) were honored to have the opportunity to restore the small cemetery and remember those buried there,” added restoration coordinator and treasurer of the Brownhelm Historical Association, Kate Rivet.