Students from one local high school got their hands dirty Saturday afternoon at a Brooklyn cemetery.

Xaverian High School students cleaned up the Revolutionary War Cemetery on the corner of Narrows Avenue and Mackay Place. They say the area has been ignored for far too long.

Just Saturday morning, the cemetery was covered in ivy with overgrown weeds. Within hours, 20 kids worked through the pouring rain to make a difference.

This was an act of service that Andrew Contrino said he just knew he had to be a part of. Contrino says the land is privately owned. He says he checked city, state and federal records for information on who might own the land, but his efforts in tracking down a specific person were unsuccessful.

He did learn, however, that the last time there was a major restoration was in 1962.

Contrino is tasked with making a big change in his community in order to climb the ranks of the Boy Scouts.

In their efforts, the scouts learned that the task was just as much a history lesson as it was a beautification project. They learned that two soldiers who fought in the revolutionary war were buried there, and they suspect that their families were buried there as well.