Five months before its 150th anniversary celebration, the New Florence Cemetery got a new addition on May 23.

A new entrance sign was built at the cemetery, located off Highway 19. It was donated by John Stambaugh and Charles Knight.

“They made the donation to have this entrance,” said Cathy Powell Nickens, who is a member of the perpetual care board of the New Florence Cemetery Association. “It has a plaque from them written about dedicating it to the lives and memories of the people who were here. Years ago, there was a little entrance and someone stole it. No one knows what happened to it. It was gone. I remember as a kid seeing it. Then, it disappeared in either the 1970s or 1980s. We don’t know what happened to it.”

Stambaugh said he decided to make a donation to the new sign after being contacted by the cemetery association.

“I got a letter from the association earlier this year trying to raise some money to do a general fix up on the cemetery, which needed a lot of work for a long time,” Stambaugh said. “Years ago, when I was a kid, my dad was on the cemetery board. He managed at that point to get perpetual care on it. Since then, the cemetery has been taken care of, but not really well.”

Stambaugh grew up in New Florence. His ancestors moved to the New Florence area in the mid-1800s.

“My mother and father always volunteered for projects around town to keep things going,” Stambaugh said. “Dad was president of the school board for years. Mom was a teacher.”

Stambaugh visited the New Florence Cemetery during the spring en route to his summer home in Denver, Colo. He goes to the cemetery at least once a year.

“New Florence has always been home,” Stambaugh said. “I never lived there since I left for college. I went back to St. Louis in 1986, but that’s as close as I got back to it.”

Powell Nickens said Stambaugh’s mother was her fourth-grade teacher at New Florence Elementary School a long time ago.

“She was a great lady,” Powell Nickens said. “It’s really nice to have that connection because she was such a sweetheart.”

The New Florence Cemetery Association had a Memorial Day Weekend In-Person Donation event in late May. The three-day total was $1,746.30 and the money will go to the headstone repair/restoration fund.

Also, the association has set a goal to raise $25,000 for the headstone project. So far, it has collected $16,000.

The cemetery’s 150th anniversary celebration is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Oct. 1 at the Old Settlers Picnic Grounds.