 Hi, I'm Leslie McVane. Welcome to CTN member highlight today. My guest is Ron Romano. Hi, Ron How are you? I'm fine now you have Become somewhat of an expert on Bartlett Adams who was a stone cutter here in the 1800s And now you are trying to educate us about the art of the stone cutting exactly Tell us how this happened and you're gonna be giving it a talk soon. Why don't you let us know where that is? Yeah, okay, the talk is gonna be at Mechanics Hall 519 Carver Street, and it's open to the public It's free 7 p.m. On June 5th Thursday June 5th, so it's coming up and will you have slides? Oh, yeah, it's a slide show and I'll show a lot of examples of Bartlett Adams work So people can come and we're gonna do some context about early Cemetery's and gravestones, but I'm really gonna focus on Bartlett Adams life and times here in Portland in the early 1800s And there's a lot of slides to show his work his actual work Well, why don't you give us a little teaser on on who he who he was and how you got involved? Yeah, well, let me say how I got involved first I really got interested in this whole concept of stone cutting and in Bartlett Adams in particular Because I was doing my family genealogy and I found some really cool old gravestones with unique carvings on them And it led me back home right here to Eastern Cemetery in Portland Where I then found the spirits live group and then from there I decided that I really wanted to research Portland's first stone cutter Bartlett Adams because nobody had really done that and His presence here is huge. He is responsible for Hundreds of the stones that we find today at Eastern Cemetery So I really wanted to kind of explore his life and family and times here in Portland and look at his specific work and Identify his work and now share it because it's really kind of a cool thing. Well, and it's beautiful I'm it the audience can't see this but I have a little picture on this card of one of the the carvings and It actually looks almost Contemporary this particular one. Yeah, and I know there are some that are a little more ornate, right? Tell us how families would go about having these done right and how he became the stone cutter, right? well originally Before he showed up in 1800 Portland was you know really isolated so people had to travel by sea there were no good overland roads and so if somebody died they would bury them at the cemetery and Oftentimes just used a wooden marker or a found field stone Wealthier families would travel to Boston and have stones cut there. So when he showed up in 1800 He really had a corner on the market. He was the first guy here who was a local Stone cutter with a shop which is now on federal where federal Street and exchange are and So he you know showed up and set up his shop and all of a sudden people didn't have to travel to Boston And so there's many many families that started to buy stones for their loved ones And even went back in time and purchased stones for people that had died many years ago Just to have just to have that permanent marker, right? Yeah I know that one of my ancestors was buried in the Eastern Cemetery And he's on the list of those that have been lost because it was a wooden marker. Yeah There's lots of there's still a few stone markers left that are unmarked just field stone But a lot of people had them replaced over the years and a lot of stones have been damaged and lost But we still have about 700 of Bartlett-Adam stones at Eastern Cemetery So I'll show examples of them during my talk And we'd love people to come into the cemetery and explore on their own and find them once once you come to my talk And learn what his style is you can go to the cemetery yourself and kind of wander through and find them Now is his work seen in other areas in the city? It is actually we have a few other early cemeteries in Portland and he's in all of those But I've also been surveying Early cemeteries throughout the region so 25 30 mile radius from Portland I've visited probably a hundred and fifty cemeteries and have found About fifteen hundred of his stones that came from his shop over the time. He was here. Oh my goodness That is huge. Yeah, so about half of that is at Eastern Cemetery right here just down the right here right here And the others are all spread out among early cemeteries throughout southern Maine And you're going to be doing walks throughout the summer. I am yeah, we at spirits alive, which is the organization I'm with we host historical walks Through the summer on the weekend Saturday Sunday and on Wednesdays in the afternoon But I'm going to be doing a special walk to really focus on Bartlett-Adam's work And that's going to be the last Saturday of every month June through October And people can check our website for the specific times and things so all the people out there Doing genealogical work right now. This might be really important Yeah, a lot of their families came from this area exactly because so many people do genealogical work and they find out where their Person is buried. Mm-hmm, but now we can start to say to them and guess who carved the stone Guess who did the artwork on that stone fantastic? Well, I think it sounds wonderful I think I see a book in the future or a movie or a movie So I I look forward to hearing the talk and great on on June 5th coming right up. It's a bit I'm being this we're more days. Yeah. Well. Thank you for being thank you so much