I can’t remember too many times over the years when I was archaeologically shocked by something, but this would definitely qualify as one of those times. When we turned over that fallen tombstone at the Pest House Cemetery and I saw the name, everything, well, everything just swirled!

Now Calvin Spencer had been dead and in the ground 198 years when our East Lyme High School anthropology class made that discovery back in the spring of 2011. I was familiar with that name.One year earlier I had interviewed an author by the name of Caroline Zinsser about her new book “Vine Utley: The Remarkable Country Doctor of Lyme, Ct.” Zinsser had spent a great deal of time investigating this Lyme physician, a man who tended our town’s medical needs during the early years of the 19th century. And what she had at her disposal was what every historian would give their eye teeth for… a personal journal regularly kept by that individual.

Dr. Utley kept precise records of his work, and that meant a log of all his patients… their illnesses, treatments and his degree of success or failure while treating them.

Among the first patients Dr. Utley tended when he came to our area in 1806 were Calvin and Mehitabel Spencer’s two young sons, Sluman and Charles. Both were seriously ill with dysentery at the time and “lay in the art of dying” to quote from the doctor’s records. The older one, Charles, would manage to survive, but the younger Sluman was only 18 months old and was too worn down to respond to treatment.

“Death would close the scene,” appeared abruptly scribbled in Dr. Utley’s medical journal.

This new family doctor would revisit the Spencer home many times in the future, but usually to treat Mr. Spencer. “May 5, 1807…I was called to visit Calvin Spencer of Lyme, a man about 43 years of age and a smither by trade. He was much worn down by taking frequent and large quantities of distilled spirits for two years past. I found him in a paralytic state… the pupils of his eyes were much dilated, and his countenance had a wild and frightful look. His pulse was slow and his whole body was in a moist sweat.” Dr. Utley went on to record that his patient awoke 15 minutes later only to begin hallucinating about rats and snakes crawling all over the room. Those hallucinations would continue for quite some time.

Dr. Utley’s diary revealed that he would visit the Spencer home to treat those same self-induced symptoms numerous times over the next few years.

But March 31, 1813, would be different. This time the much worn-down constitution of local blacksmith Calvin Spencer would succumb to an outside agency… a deadly disease. The doctor’s final diagnosis was that Mr. Spencer “died of a currently prevailing epidemic, vulgarly called ‘spotted fever.’”

His body was promptly removed from the Spencer home and buried in the town’s Pestilence House Cemetery on Upper Pattagansett Road. And that’s right where we found his overturned stone in 2011 with a metal probing rod.

Looking back, that was certainly a significant dig, one which I believe added substantially to what is known of East Lyme’s past. We were able to make a strong case for an old pest house to have been located right there at #17 Upper Pattagansett Road in the Flanders section of town.

It just so happened that along the way, we became reacquainted with one of the cemetery’s better-documented residents.

“How much do you really like Calvin Spencer?” local resident Rod McCauley inquired recently as we stood together at the Old Stone Cemetery after concluding some recent graveyard gate repairs. Rod is very active in the East Lyme Historical Society and has unselfishly offered his many talents to those in charge of our historic cemeteries. After taking a course in cemetery gravestone repair, Mr. McCauley has been spending a great deal of his time this past year or so cleaning and repairing historic tombstones in town. He had been granted permission by the cemetery association and was obviously looking for a partner in crime to help him with the restoration of Calvin Spencer’s highly compromised brownstone grave marker.

Before I could say “no,” “maybe later,” or “let me think about it,” the next thing I knew the two of us were walking purposely through the woods, shovels in hand ready to dig up what remained of Mr. Spencer’s tombstone. It felt like something right out of a Steven King novel.

Like many gravestones of old, we discovered the original failure to have been roughly at ground level. Digging out what stone remained in the ground and collecting the two other pieces that had been lying flat and buried for many years, we transported all three pieces (with the help of a dolly) back to a waiting truck.

Calvin took his first ride in centuries (in a horseless carriage, no less) and was treated to a much-needed bath upon arrival at the Littlefield home on Smith Street.

Rod suggested we remove lichen and other growth from the tombstone using flat wooden sticks he brought along and when finished, gently washing the stone off with a hose. Afterwards, it was treated with a product called “D2.” Evidently this is the antibacterial concoction of choice that knowledgeable cemeterians use to clean and treat gravestones.

“Never use bleach or harsh chemicals,” Rod cautioned. “They can do serious damage to the stone.”

The three pieces were then brought into my workshop and laid out on a table, but we both soon realized that this was the first week of November and repairs could not be made if the temperature could not be kept above 50 degrees. Only then could we be assured that the epoxy and the mortar we would be using in the repairs would cure properly. Down in a warm basement furnace room he went.

We built a wooden “cradle” for our new guest … one that would secure the base of the stone, allowing us to vertically reconstruct the three broken pieces. We did a dry run to see if they went back together reasonably well.

Fortunately, they did, despite a few small pieces that were missing.

The next step was to mix the epoxy that would “glue” the tombstone back together. Cement should never be used or any of the popular glues on the market. A special two-part epoxy called “Tenax Rivo 50” that was a gift from my cemeterian friends down in Georgia, we were assured, was currently the best adhesive on the market for rearticulating (archaeological term for “put back together”) gravestones. Hugh Harrington and his wife Susan had a long history of doing southern graveyard repair work in high profile cemeteries and it was gratifying that they took such keen interest in their New England neighbors to the north.

Adding wooden slats to secure the cradle as pieces of stone were glued back together and the monument grew in height, we managed to finish this phase of the process on the same day.

Next, Rod said, would be the mortaring of joints and filling in the missing stone. For this he had ordered a special mortar mix used on the masonry of historic structures. He also ordered several possible tints that could be added once the best color match for the brownstone marker was agreed upon. (This took a fair amount of time as the experimental mixtures had to thoroughly dry before the color could be properly evaluated.)

When this was completed, we balanced Calvin carefully in an upright position,removed the cradle and lay the tombstone against a supporting piece of plywood. We slowly lowered it facedown. Rod and I had agreed that the backside of the stone required the most (but easiest) repairs and, as the frontside had the epitaph inscribed on it, it was important to do that only after gaining confidence in our tombstone repair skills.

We found that backside fairly easy to mortar as the missing brownstone areas were sizable and relatively deep, which made for good adhesion. The tinted color match was also acceptable, we thought.

With one side left to do, we were hoping our luck would hold.

We were able (with some major effort) to turn Calvin over onto his backside. We realized that there were some real issues here. Replacing missing letters and numerals on the inscription, for example, would certainly be no easy matter. We did have the existing ones for use as guides and were soon able to establish the proper shapes and sizes for the ones needed.

We decided to make metal letters and numbers in the shop,figuring they could best be employed during the wet mortar stage of the repair. Because the missing date “1813” and the last two missing letters from the word “died” on the epitaph were sequential, the metal numbers and letters could be hand-forged and then welded together in “branding iron” fashion and applied easily and uniformly to the stone in one operation. We mixed up some sm all sample batches of mortar and gave this a try. Not surprisingly,results began to improve with repeated testing.

The missing pieces of the epitaph were soon stamped into the wet mortar and left to dry, bringing all tombstone repairs to a welcome close.

Now only one thing remained, but this was no trifling matter.

Calvin had entered the basement in three manageable pieces but now fully reconstituted, he was a great deal heavier than we had anticipated. (We estimated the stone to weigh approximately 300 pounds.)

How the heck were we ever going to lug Calvin Spencer’s tombstone up the steep and narrow cellar stairs and into the light of day? How would we then get him up into a waiting truck and eventually walk him through the woods to his Pest House Cemetery home without killing or maiming ourselves in the process? Or, for that matter, what if disaster befell this brownstone piece of history which we had worked so hard to repair? We would spend many a sleepless night imagining how this might best be done.

Jim Littlefield is a retired history teacher and author of two local history books and two Civil War novels. He lives in East Lyme. His articles can also be found in the Post Road Review.