Archaeologists from Texas A & M University did some digging this weekend at a cemetery in West Columbia, Texas. Local legend said that 248 Mexican-American War soldiers and 16 Civil War soldiers were buried in the yard, but the team turned up just the corner of a coffin and six probable unmarked graves.
Whereupon the dig was pronounced a success.
“Our whole objective was to see are there unmarked graves in this area of the cemetery,” said Alston V. Thoms, the assistant professor of archaeology and anthropology at Texas A&M University who led the effort. “We learned yes, there are, but there aren’t nearly enough graves here to account for the local folklore.”
That wasn’t a surprise, he said.
“I’ve never done an excavation project where I found what I thought I would find when I started,” Thoms said. [Link]
[tagged: genealogy]
