Volunteers clean up a piece of history at Green-Wood Cemetery

Two student interns from Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Design were joined by six French Preservation Volunteers were put to work restoring a piece of New York’s Civil War history on Thursday, August 8.

“I got involved through my school. They heavily advised us to get field experience and I got two excellent supervisors,” said Luis Ramirez, a student intern from Williamsburg High School. “We’ve learned a lot skills to help us in life.”

The group, supervised by two Green-Wood employees, cleaned up the Tinker family lot, a 12-foot-tall granite monument surrounded by the stones for Charles Tinker, his wife and four children. During the Civil War, Charles Tinker worked in the telegraph office of the War Department for Abraham Lincoln and was he hand delivered the message to Lincoln stating that he was renominated for the 1864 election.

“It’s great for all of us and [the French interns] get to see the real New York,” said Richard G. Moylan, president of Green-Wood Cemetery. “The interaction is just terrific we get work done but that’s only a small part of it.”

Tanguy Firinga, one of the French volunteers, agreed, “It has been interesting to work and we get to visit New York, too.”

This is the volunteers’ second week in New York as part of the Preservation Volunteers. During the first week they worked on preserving window shutters and have finished out their time in New York by digging out the sunken stones of Tinker’s family and cleaning the granite monument.

Luis Santamaria, a Williamsburg High School student who wants to pursue a career in architecture said he “chose this internship to help preserve the land and learn about the foundation.”

This week-long project is supervised by the Green-Wood Historic Fund, a not-for-profit organization, along with Preservation Volunteers. The partnership that has been in place for twelve years. Together the two groups aim to preserve objects of historical, cultural and architectural value that otherwise would be forgotten by public.