A little bit about our speaker, Ruth Shapleigh-Brown!  Ruth comes to us with an interest in genealogy through her family's headstones: 

Ruth has been involved in burial ground preservation and gravestone studies since the mid 1980's when she visited her ancestral family plots in Maine. The Shapleigh’s came from England in the early 1600’s, being first settlers in the area now known as Eliot and Kittery. Finding them in an overgrown weed covered state, she thought this to be very disrespectful and organized some family members to clean them up.  This was the tip of the iceberg for what has since become Ruth's passion in life. She states that studying these historic artifacts and protecting them is a way to interact with history and those that came before us.

            Ruth has worked with conservation workshops as part of the annual Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) conferences since 1989.  She            was conference chair in 1993 when the AGS conference was held in New London, and served for six years as an AGS trustee. In 1995 Ruth                       organized fellow Connecticut AGS members and founded the Connecticut Gravestone Network.

                 Ruth has worked closely over the years with the Connecticut State Archaeology Office and with the State Historic Preservation

                  Office.  She personally gives presentations and programs on basic burial ground/cemetery conservation including directing                                                     community workshops as well as being on the boards of many cemetery related organizations, and over the                                                                    years being featured on various news and magazine articles; the latest being the Fall 2022 issue of the

                                        Connecticut Explored Magazine.