elcome to the Association for Gravestone Studies. We are an organization of approximately 1000 members, with about half in the Northeast. The rest are distributed around the country and in some foreign countries, including Canada, Japan, Germany, England, and Australia. Our office is located in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Each year in June we hold a week-long annual conference that is held at a different college. Motor coach tours to cemeteries, workshops on conservation of gravestones, making foil impressions and rubbings, and photographic instruction are but some of the things that we do at these conferences. This June over 100 members and non-members attended the conference at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The Conservation Committee presented hands-on instruction in a local cemetery. Nineteen scholarly lectures were given during the evenings, and a day of participation sessions offered classroom presentations on various topics. Our highest award, the Harriette Merrifield Forbes Award, was conferred on Ruth Shapleigh Brown and three other individuals received the prestigious Oakley Certificate of Merit. 
  
We encourage you to participate in our conferences and publishing efforts. The recent issue of Markers, our annual journal, included articles by seven authors, while the last four issues of the AGS Quarterly had fifteen major articles and fourteen book reviews. AGS members contribute many of these works. In addition, we encourage work in local areas to ensure that your cemeteries are mapped, recorded, and cared for, not only for the benefit of current genealogists and historians, but for all future generations as well. 
 
If you share any of these interests—art, history, art history, genealogy, archaeology, anthropology, conservation, or material culture, please join us and support our work. There is much to do and we eagerly solicit your participation. We would enjoy meeting you, learning of your interests, and including you in our activities. 

Ian W. Brown
President

From the President
Ian W. Brown
Fall Quarterly, Vol. 33:4
 

On October 10, the AGS Board of Trustees had its fall meeting in Greenfield, Massachusetts, at our headquarters. For those of you have not yet seen this facility it is a wonderful spacious complex with lots of room for workshops and even small conferences. As some of you might wonder just what goes on at AGS board meetings, I thought I would give a brief description of this last one to give a sense of just how exciting they can be. This particular board meeting was a little different from most, however, because the focus was purely on committee development. In addition to trustees, all committee members were invited.

One of the prime duties of the President immediately following the annual conference is to put committees together. The makeup of committees, their chairs, and their objectives tend to flow easily from one year to the next, but with a new administration some changes are inevitable. I myself did not realize just how long it would take to set up nine committees (Archives, Awards, Chapters, Conference Planning, Conservation, Executive, Membership and Development, Nominating, and Web Site) and two boards (E-Newsletter and Markers). Thankfully, the publication boards were already in place, which certainly expedited matters, but the number of people involved in the operation of the AGS can sometimes be rather mind-boggling. At present there are twenty-four AGS trustees, two trustee-emeriti, three ex officio members, two staff operatives, and seventeen additional people who give their time to making sure we accomplish all the things that necessarily have to be done each year, as well as direct our path into the future.

I decided to use the October board meeting to get the various committees off to a good start. Eighteen people were able to attend this meeting, which is a decent number considering that this was a three-day weekend and that very few people actually live near Greenfield. Several members had to drive from distant states, so these efforts are greatly appreciated. Based on the make-up of attendees, I opted to concentrate on four committees. Discussion groups were set up to deal with Archives, Conservation, Chapters, and Conference Planning and for two hours during Saturday morning groups of four to five individuals deliberated on general objectives and specific ways to meet them. Tricia Welch, AGS Administrator, and I went from group to group in order to be educated, as well as to offer various ideas when warranted. I especially wanted to make sure that each person in these sessions had a voice.

The small-group sessions were very valuable, I think, because they just don’t happen enough at meetings. Most board communication today is done by email due to time and distance constraints. Seldom do committee members have the luxury of sitting down for several hours with others of like interests to contemplate larger pictures and how they might be drawn. Ideally, such gatherings would occur at the annual conference or at ad hoc meetings during the year, but there are so many other things going on at these times and in our lives in general that it’s very difficult to get people together. No matter how much technology has evolved over the years, I believe it is still very important that people meet in person when they can. Bonds are established at such times that enable a greater level of success, or at least that’s the hope.

We had a wonderful lunch in the conference room, catered by trustee Sabrina Selfridge, and the afternoon was then spent with each chair or spokesperson giving a summary of what their committee members discussed. Nancy Adgent ran the Archives Committee in the morning and Rob Cox was the afternoon representative for this committee. TaMaraConde served as chair and initiated the discussion for the Conservation Committee, and Joshua Segal did the same for the Chapters Committee. Beth Santore unfortunately came down with the flu the day before our meeting and was unable to attend, but she did manage to stay tuned in to our proceedings courtesy of Tom Mason’s laptop. Judi Trainor ran the Conference Planning Committee in Beth’s stead and did a wonderful job bringing us up-to-date on what is in store for all of us next June in Ohio. Finally, short reports were given by the Membership and Development Committee (Joy Giguere sent in a summary that was delivered by Tricia Welch) and I discussed the important role that the Nominating Committee has each and every year. Our future state relies on recruiting able trustees, so I encouraged everyone to think about energetic talented people from across the land (and water!) who will help direct our operations when we have served our terms and moved on to greener pastures.

Our meeting was over by 2:30 p.m., as most people had long drives or flights. I stayed around to meet with a couple of members of the Executive Committee to address specific issues and we all then went our several ways. In January, April and June there will be other board meetings of the AGS, all guaranteed to be very formal with reports, recommendations, motions, seconds, debates, fisticuffs, votes, resolutions, and all those other good things that make organizations operable. Such meetings with well-defined agenda are indeed necessary, but I know that I will look back with a degree of nostalgia if not longing for this wonderful fall meeting where we all got to know each other and remember just why it is that we do what we do. 

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