A Road Runs Round It

Nancy Kerlin Barnett is buried in the middle of County Road 400S in Johnson County, Indiana. Her neighbors moved out long ago.

Over time a foot path developed through this small cemetery and later a county road was planned through it. Other graves probably were moved, but one of Nancy’s sons objected to moving her grave. Since it originally wasn’t a problem, her grave was left behind.

The trouble developed still later when the county wanted to widen the road. Now the grave would have to be moved.

So the story goes, her grandson, Daniel Doty, went to the gravesite with his shotgun and, in essence said, “over my dead body.” How long he remained there and what was said by whom to whom isn’t definitely known.

The upshot, however, was that the county agreed not to move the grave. [Link]

Genealogy? Never Heard of It

The State of Indiana is planning to move a small cemetery in Castleton to make way for a highway expansion. Some local Whitesells are wondering if they're related to the Whitesells moldering there.

According to Curt Whitesell, the family wants proof that the people buried there, are indeed, part of the family. "We'd like to know. Can we do tests? DNA tests? How can we be a part of it to know yay or nay?"

And while it's uncertain that the living Whitesells are related to the buried Whitesells, the possibility thrills a family in search of their roots. [Link]

If only there was a way to figure out if these people are related—maybe by studying old records or something. But I'm sure no one has ever bothered to research the Whitesells of Marion County, Indiana.

They'd Pave Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot

This unusual notice appeared Tuesday in a UK newspaper:

RELATIVES are being invited to collect their headstones from a graveyard which will be turned into a car park.

Bolton Council Planning Committee gave the go-ahead for Lee Lane United Reformed Church in Horwich to be turned into 11 two-bedroom apartments with parking spaces. [Link]

The decision was not without its critics.

She'd Know That Skull Anywhere

Genealogist Joyce Saunders had the chance to meet her great-grandfather, Civil War soldier Roland Gillispie, when his remains were moved to make way for a highway in West Virginia.

She noticed Gillispie’s skull was relatively small compared to that of an average man. She knew it was his based on prior research into his medical record.

“He had the head of maybe a 12- or 14-year-old boy,” Saunders said. “He was only 5’5”, had a fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair.” [Link]

Buried Behind a Wall at the Mall

The Crowley family graveyard in Decatur, Georgia, used to lie on a hill in the middle of a cow pasture. Now it lies high above a mall parking lot, surrounded by a two-story granite wall.

The surrounding pasture was graded to create the mall parking lot, leaving an elevated patch that contained the graves. The developer built a granite wall to protect them, and shut it in behind a wrought-iron gate that leads to stairs.

The result is a 20-foot tall, walled cemetery that resembles a bunker.

It bemused shoppers at Columbia Mall, then Avondale Mall, who sometimes called it "the tomb of the unknown shopper." [Link]

We Live, We Die, We Decay

Donald and Betty Timberlake recently met their great-great-grandfather for the first time. He was buried in an iron coffin in 1863 and disinterred because of encroaching development on the grounds of his former Virginia plantation. He's now being inspected at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History.

First, Shelley Foote, a specialist in 19th century clothing, examined the corpse.

"He was buried in a suit," she said. "The cutaway coat was typical of a man's daytime wear. It's a little unusual that the lapels have velvet facings. He must have been wearing a cotton shirt because cotton disintegrates quickly and there's no sign of it."

Pathologist Larry Cartmell took samples of hair, fingernails and body tissue, placing them in plastic bags for lab analysis.

"From the hair and fingernails, we can determine what medicines he was taking and how much he used tobacco and alcohol, Cartmell said. "We can do tests to determine how much meat he ate. We will x-ray the teeth to look at that abscess. We will put everything together and attempt to come up with a cause of death."

Asked her thoughts about viewing the remains of her great, great grandfather, Betty Timberlake shrugged. "It's all part of life. We live, we die, we decay." [Link]

It Could Happen to You (When You're Dead)

From turnto10.com (of Providence, R.I.):

Residents Want Action In Cemetery Desecration Case

People Charged In Case Have Yet To Be Arraigned

POSTED: December 20, 2005

WESTPORT, Mass. -- Westport preservationists are putting pressure on the Bristol County district attorney to prosecute three people accused of desecrating a cemetery.

"A neighbor had come to the police department -- a neighbor of this property -- and said that the cemetery had been disturbed. This goes back now [to] November of 2004," Sgt. Jeff Majewski said Tuesday.

That's when Westport police charged the owners of Bristol, R.I.-based contractor ELJ with two felony charges of destroying a burial site. The company was clearing land for a housing development.

[snip]

Preservationists worry that this case could endanger dozens of other cemeteries in town -- some of which are unmarked.

"We all die. We all have dead ancestors. This could happen to any of us," [concerned resident Betty] Slade said.

[Read the whole story]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

Developers Dying to Get Hands on Land

From The (Phoenix) Arizona Republic:

History buried at tiny cemetery

Final resting place for ranch workers, Valley luminaries

Linda Helser
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 20, 2005 12:00 AM

Land developers must salivate every time they pass this anonymous little cemetery sitting in the midst of some of the toniest multimillion-dollar real estate in Paradise Valley.

But they aren't likely to get their hands on the two acres that make up Camelback Cemetery, where tombstones carry names such as Herberger, Kiser and Powell.

"According to comparable properties in the immediate area, it has a value of approximately $1 million an acre," said Kathy Cerreta, 54, an agent for Re/Max Fine Properties in Scottsdale.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It

From Style Weekly in Richmond, Virginia:

Graveyard Detectives

When developers stumble onto unmarked cemeteries, historians help put a host of questions to rest.

by Katie T. Gantt
August 10, 2005

A building surge in Chesterfield County is turning up an increasing problem for landowners and developers: the discovery of unmarked family and church graveyards.

[snip]

In Chesterfield, the county routes most of its calls from developers seeking assistance with unmarked graveyards to Rachel Lipowicz. She’s the cemetery committee chairwoman of the Chesterfield Historical Society, and she and her five-person team stand ready to respond.

[snip]

. . . some graves are tampered with before Lipowicz or [team member Pattie] Grady ever gets to them. “We had one within the past five years where some young people dug up some of the bones and ground them and smoked them in a pipe,” Grady says. (They were eventually arrested and prosecuted.)

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Dead vs. The Not Quite Dead

From the (Everett, Wash.) Daily Herald of Aug. 9, 2005:

City to excavate old cemetery

By Yoshiaki Nohara
Herald Writer

SNOHOMISH - Let the dead - if there are any left - rest in a new place, and let seniors build a new home on the pioneer cemetery site.

That plan will be set in motion when the city starts excavating a parcel this month on Cypress Avenue in the city's eastern end, where Snohomish pioneers were buried until the early 1900s and where the Snohomish Senior Center now operates in a small pink house. Near the house, the senior center plans to build a 6,000-square-foot building to meet the growing demand for services.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Top Ten Signs Your House Was Built on a Graveyard

10. Your dog refuses to go down in the cellar.

9. The local mortuary offers you referrals.

8. The previous owners asked for an "exhumation easement."

7. Your Eternal Flame gas bill fills two envelopes.

6. The paperboy accidentally tosses your newspaper into the crypt.

5. The guy you hired to dig your swimming pool ran away screaming.

4. Your daughter keeps telling you "They're here" in a spooky voice.

3. You catch genealogists in the garage transcribing your license plates.

2. Strangers leave plastic flowers around your birdbath.

1. The stones in your garden path all have the same last name.

Six Feet Under the Sunoco Station

From W*USA 9 News (Washington, D. C.):

Gas Station Built On Cemetery Poses New Problems For Owner

Written by Peggy Fox
Created:8/5/2005

Oscar Butt is living the American Dream. Just eight-years after moving to America, he bought this gas station on Washington Street in Alexandria for $250,000.

Oscar has owned it for 15-years and has paid off the loan. But now his dream is in jeopardy and so is the future for his wife and four children.

"I had no idea what was here," says Oscar.

Underneath the gas station is a cemetery filled [with] freed slaves. City officials say x-ray photos and documents show between 1200 and 1800 people are buried here.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Overlooking the Dead

From Edinburgh (Scotland) Evening News of Aug. 3, 2005:

Chiefs aim to beat graveyard vandals by building new flats

GARETH EDWARDS

PLANNERS hope to improve security at a historic city graveyard - by building more than 30 flats beside it.

Edinburgh City Council is set to lift planning rules which bar development so close to cemeteries to allow the development to go ahead.

It is hoped the new five-storey apartment block, which would overlook the Leith cemetery, will deter vandals from desecrating the ancient gravestones.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

A Grave, or Just a Hole in the Ground?

From The (Elgin, Ill.) Courier News of July 4, 2005:

Questions loom over gravesite
Civil War vet believed to be buried in area of growth in N. Aurora

By Tim Wagner
STAFF WRITER

NORTH AURORA — Tucked in a wooded area that bisects a pair of cornfields lies a sunken hole surrounded by patches of orange, wild tiger lilies.

The rock-filled cavity is about 8 feet long and 5 feet wide.

And legend suggests it is the grave of a Civil War veteran named Clark Smith.

But is it?

[snip]

This story begins 50 years ago this month when Mel Magnuson heard from area rabbit hunters that a tombstone stood in North Aurora; the alleged gravesite is located about a quarter-mile south of Butterfield Road, to the west of Mitchell Road.

Curiosity got the best of Magnuson, who in 1955 trekked to the area where he, indeed, found a tombstone that read: Clark Smith, Co. H, Illinois Infantry, 1831-1867.

More than a decade later, a group of friends from North Aurora came across the grave while hiking in 1967 100 years after Smith's demise, caused when his horse-drawn wagon was hit by a train, killing a woman as well. Brothers Gerald and Steven Bumgarner and pals Michael Brown and Tim Theis liked to camp at the site and — typical teen-agers — used it as a tool to scare other kids.

[snip]

Today, the tombstone is gone.

Last spring, while traveling down Mitchell Road, Magnuson noticed housing developments sprawling southward, stopping a couple hundred yards from the gravesite. He worried that if he didn't speak up, no one would realize the Civil War veteran was possibly buried in the area, and that his grave might be bulldozed and built over should there be further construction.

So Magnuson contacted the Kane County Genealogical Society and it soon was discovered that the original tombstone was missing.

[snip]

Is there, indeed, a grave?

Can it at least be researched and officially determined?

If so, will future developers respect it by either protecting it, or allowing it to be exhumed and buried elsewhere?

[snip]

"What I want to come out of it," Magnuson said, "is I want to find out where Clark Smith is buried and give him the proper recognition of an American veteran."

Said Bumgarner: "It'll be real disappointing if he isn't there."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Colonial Family Stalls Development

From NewsZap.com:

State seeking descendants, Bowers Beach family plot holds up to 150 burials

By Kate House-Layton, Delaware State News

LITTLE HEAVEN - When someone dies, typically the next of kin is notified.

But try notifying them more than 100 to 200 years after a person's death and burial. That's the task the state Historic Preservation office is facing as it seeks out descendants of those buried in a family plot along Bowers Beach.

The office is searching for descendents of the Newell family who once owned and occupied a farm south of Mulberrie Point Road, east of Skeeter Neck Road and west of Old Bowers road near Little Heaven. A legal notice was placed in the Delaware State News June 12.

The family cemetery was discovered a few years ago when landowner and Wilmington attorney L. Vincent Ramunno sought development of the 202-acre property into Bowers Landing, which has since been approved for 202 homes along Skeeter Neck and Old Bowers roads.

[snip]

Mr. Ramunno said he was glad the cemetery was found.

"It was rather, frankly, interesting although expensive," Mr. Ramunno said. "The last thing you want to do is dig it up and have a problem."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Yet another real-estate developer who should heed the lessons of Poltergeist.

Dentist Denies Desecration

From The (Columbia, S. C.) State of June 1, 2005:

Woman files counterclaim in possible grave desecration case

Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A woman who says a couple falsely accused her of bulldozing graves in one of Wadmalaw Island's oldest black cemeteries has filed a countersuit claiming libel and slander.

Olivia Palmer, a local dentist, is seeking $21 million in damages, claiming emotional distress and lost business after she says the couple lied to cover up grave desecration that occurred during their ownership.

[snip]

Baker and his wife said they knew about a small graveyard on the property, but neighbors later told them that hundreds had been buried on the land, including some under their house. Their lawsuit claims the 3-acre property is now worthless and they are seeking unspecified damages.

[snip]

Palmer claims at least one grave site was damaged after the couple purchased the property and brought in contractors with heavy equipment.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Haven't these people ever seen the movie Poltergeist?