When E&E Metal Fab Inc. workers began to fix and refurbish the Sentry Monument at Cedar Hill Cemetery, it was an undertaking of a job unlike any they’d ever done before.
There was a bit of trepidation initially by company officials to perform the work, especially since the monument’s composition was believed to be white bronze. However, some research revealed that white bronze is another name for zinc.
Initial reservations about doing the project – although there was plenty of excitement, too – was understandable given the stature of the statue. First erected and dedicated on May 31, 1884, the Union sentinel has stood guard over Fredericksburg in Bethel Township for nearly 141 years.
Cedar Hill Cemetery was created in 1869 and the first person buried there in 1870. After the monument was added in 1884 by John Lick, families were given the option to re-inter their loved ones who were Civil War veterans in the cemetery near the monument or elsewhere in the graveyard, according to cemetery association treasurer Rita Christ.
Christ said 68 Civil War veterans are interred in Cedar Hill Cemetery, out of the 192 veterans buried there.
“Bronze was what I was first told it was but a true investigation came up with it being total zinc,” said Al Billig, sales representative for E&E of Lebanon.
Knowing that they could work with zinc, Billig submitted a bid for the project and the restoration work was awarded to the company, meaning the project was kept in the Lebanon Valley. LebTown previously reported prior to E&E’s involvement that a firm in Oberlin, Ohio, was believed to be among the few that perform statue restorations.
Read More: 140-year-old sentry statue to be renovated during restoration project
Once they realized they could do the project, E&E officials were ecstatic to explore new waters.
“We actually were a little excited, couldn’t wait to get to do it,” Billig said. “I think that’s a piece of history that not everybody gets to work on. So we were a little excited to see where it went because we didn’t know how bad it was and what it would take (to restore it).”
E&E employee Brad Sebastian handled most of the statue’s renovation work after it was disassembled near the end of last October and shipped to Lebanon. The work was recently completed.
“As far as this guy goes, from what when we got him in, the guy was pitched back hard. This whole plate back here was pushed down in. So basically we just started heating them up, and pushing and pulling where we needed to to start straightening them out,” Sebastian said.
A driving force in the restoration decision was to strengthen the base by reinforcing its perimeter with formed stainless channels and angle across the middle.
“Just to hold it in so it doesn’t go back out,” Sebastian said about the statue’s newly reinforced base that’s secured with sturdy cable wiring in eight spots. “We heated everything up and we built a jig around the outside so that we can push to straighten it all out. Then the cables and stuff, after we got it to where we wanted it, that all gets tightened up to maintain, to keep it so it doesn’t expand again over time.”
It’s unknown when the statue shifted backwards, but workers believe they have an idea what may have contributed to it happening.
“Remember when that storm went through Fredericksburg? I bet you that had a lot to do with it,” Sebastian said. “That’s the one that wrecked the (American) Legion. They said there was like, what, 140 mile an hour winds or something like that.”
That storm plus other contributing forces of nature over the course of more than a century.
“I’m guessing just hot and cold and everything else, but the wind, ’cause that’s the way he was leaning. Normally when we get our storms, they come from the north-northwest kind of in that direction. What happened was it pushed his heels, it dented that thing in hard. Some of the stuff was like an inch and a half,” Sebastian added.
Billig explained that heating and cooling temperatures also played a role since the interior of the hollow base reached extremely high temperatures. Repetitive heating and cooling caused the monument’s base to develop small cracks.
Read More: 140-year-old Civil War statue removed from Cedar Hill Cemetery for restoration
It’s believed the statue would have eventually fallen from its perch if the backward shift was left unaddressed, according to E&E plant manager Lemar Neidigh.
“You get all that weight hanging out there, and that just puts stress on it. He had only four little bolts holding him to the top,” Neidigh said. “That pretty much starts to put all the stress on just the bolt facing the west end.”
Another tricky job was ensuring the statue was straight, which led to workers erecting the sentinel on his base once that work was completed.
During work to address the base’s sturdiness, the inscribed words “J.A. Owens” were discovered on the bottom of the base on which the soldier stood. (More on Owens and other historical facts discovered during restoration of the monument can be read here.)
Read More: Solving the mysteries of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Civil War monument
A circle had been drilled into the plate’s base through his name. It’s possible that happened after workers originally attempted to erect the 6-foot-tall soldier because it fell over when they first attempted to erect it, according to local history writer Kathy Bicksler Stouffer.
Bicksler Stouffer and her siblings authored the 2021 book, “Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.” That book contains a chapter on churches and cemeteries, including Cedar Hill Cemetery.
“When they were putting the soldier on top of the monument for the first time, I’m assuming with ropes, it fell off the top,” Stouffer said.
Billig told LebTown that heating and cooling temperatures led to small fractures throughout the monument, which measures around 24 feet from the base to the top of the hat that sits on the sentinel’s head.
“Repairing small cracks, just patching small cracks here and there and filling them and cleaning them up that way,” Billig said. “There were some hairline cracks and stuff like that. We filled them with epoxy.”
Most repairs were minor, which speaks to the craftsmanship that went into creating the statue in the late-1800s.
“They’re just that: cosmetic,” Billig said. “When we find a crack, we’ll take a die grinder and we clean the crack out to get all the dirt and whatever and you have that went into the crack.”
Cleaning also consisted of using a small amount of vinegar and water, at first, as a test to remove over a century of grime. It was also repainted prior to being placed in storage until it can be returned later this month.
“I did research for cleaning statues and learned that vinegar and water in a light pressure washer is what to use,” Billig said. “We also used a small spot to test that. We had guys in there with toothbrushes.”
The transformation for the entire monument going from entrenched in grime to clean and repainted and the sentinel being repositioned has been amazing.
“I’m pretty happy without the turnout of the statue because we were in unchartered waters and really did not know what was going to happen,” Billig said. “It was a complete group effort and we learned a lot about it.”
John Klahr, president of Cedar Hill Cemetery Association, previously told LebTown that the monument’s original base was made of stone, which was also used to build homes during that era.
Cemetery officials decided to pour a new foundation, and that work occurred the last week of February with the shift to more pleasant weather. The new foundation will be several feet deep and reinforced with stone and rebar so that the monument remains in place for at least another 140 years – if not for perpetuity.
Once the foundation has time to settle, a day this spring will be selected to return the soldier to his post to guard over the town of Fredericksburg followed by a dedication ceremony on a later date to be determined, according to Klahr, who added the foundation work would take about one week to complete.
“We’re moving along and progressing very well,” he added.
A work of art
Another amazing fact fleshed out during the restoration is the craftsmanship and attention to detail by the artist who created the nearly 24-foot-tall monument.
“Look at the cracks in his knuckles, in his fingers,” said Neidigh. “Look at his fingernails and the joints in his fingers. Just little things like his mustache. The hair in his mustache stands out. His hat has wrinkles in it.”
Wherever artwork was placed on the statue, attention to detail is weaved throughout those areas.
From the buttons on his cape to the ramrod that was used to slam the ball down the barrel of his musket, the artist was meticulous in creating this masterpiece. Even the picture on the one section that contains Union Gen. Phillip Sheridan on a horse shows the animal’s leg muscles in fine detail.
“You can see the hair, the original hair in the beard,” said Billig. “All the details down here. Even the waves in Lincoln’s hair, his eyelids, you know, his mouth is kind of opening up.”
The words “handsome,” “beautiful,” and “fine relief” are used in the 1885 article about the monument. Fine relief is an artistic style whose details project only slightly from the background, meaning they are very shallow and delicately carved, essentially signifying a “low relief” with particularly subtle details and minimal depth.
“It is absolutely a work of art. It’s not surprising to me that when John Lick hired someone to do this job, he would do it right,” Bicksler Stouffer said. “He was a man who was really into the community and did lots of different projects. He was a philanthropist, and the Civil War was really near and dear to his heart, so when he did this he made sure it was very beautiful and was something that the cemetery could be proud to have there.”
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