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I often wonder how much history is lost due to construction. Companies bid with a completion date in mind. It they accidently hit an archaeological site the appropriate people have to be called and work shut down until their research is complete.
When we were first married DH worked with a construction crew and told me how much they hated to find any evidence of previous
human existence.
It has been fairly common here. Most of the little family farms are being bought up by big business and many of them were in the same families for a couple of centuries. They often had their own family burial plot somewhere on the land they owned.
In the late 40s/early 50s my dad worked for the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) clearing land for the formation of Lake Barkley in western Kentucky. They would be grading land and all of a sudden see a rectangle of darker dirt. They then knew they had uncovered an old unmarked grave. It was dug up and what few bones that were left were reburied in another cemetery made just for these finds. These days, there is a group of volunteers who go out every fall after the killing frost going through what is now the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. The TVA forced residents off their land in this 170,000 area, some voluntarily, some not. But there are no telling how many unmarked graves where "Grandma and Grandpa were buried out behind the barn", or somebody buried their child under a tree by the house, etc. After all foliage has died, they look in areas where they have been told there "might" be a grave or two. They rake off all the weeds and what not, looking for sunken spots in the ground. These aren't dug up but a PVC cross is put by each one showing that someone is buried there. I think my wife said they've been doing this for over 30 years.
It's still not unheard of in VA for bones to be found in old colonial trash pits/heaps. Indentured servants who died were disposed of this way until the colony started requiring deaths be reported. The Leavy Neck body might be the most famous: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/educat.../body-basement
For more on this era: Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally Walker might be of interest.
Many years ago, when my father bought land for development he was surprised and upset that some graves were found in the woods. It took years to track down the families, some could not be found. Ultimately, they were all reburied and when the family couldn't be found, with the permission of the court, they were reburied and he had to pay for the reburials.
Unless you have some extraordinary claim of historical significance in time no one will a memory of you. Cremation, ashes into the sea perhaps. Cemeteries are routinely repurposed into parking lots, housing developments and other uses. Your immediate kin will remember you but after that you are lost to the world.
Someone was building a development in Bergen County some years ago and uncovered a family burial plot marked with names of some of the early Dutch settlers. The builder called the historical society and reconfigured the development to preserve the burial ground. The article about the story said that similar old family plots are often just plowed under, but this builder had an interest in the area history.
In a town where I once lived, there was a corner of a schoolyard that had some sort of memorial, to local firefighters, IIRC, and shrubs around it. I walked over to look at it once, and something caught my eye. Underneath one of the shrubs was an old grey gravestone, now lying flat and set with bricks, with the name "Hannah" and a last name with a date from the late 1800s indicating that she died in infancy. I never learned the backstory, but I am guessing the grave was encountered at some point and they decided to preserve the stone in place.
I often wonder how much history is lost due to construction. Companies bid with a completion date in mind. It they accidently hit an archaeological site the appropriate people have to be called and work shut down until their research is complete.
When we were first married DH worked with a construction crew and told me how much they hated to find any evidence of previous
human existence.
It has been fairly common here. Most of the little family farms are being bought up by big business and many of them were in the same families for a couple of centuries. They often had their own family burial plot somewhere on the land they owned.
In todays world.. Less so. Now, this can and probably will vary from state to state and location to location.. But the SC DOT is really on the ball so far as where cemeteries are located and, as you can see from the details in my previous post.. Quite respectful. If a cemetery is uncovered during their work they didn't know about.. The work stops until determination is made on what to do about it. But, for the most part, they avoid disturbing a cemetery.
SC also has laws that if you purchase a property and it has a cemetery.. You're not responsible for maintenane, but.. you can't restrict access to the cemetery to relatives or authorized agents. I've had to pull this one out and go to the magistrate to get allowed access to some old family cemeteries in the past. Rare.. Usually land owners are quite receptive if you talk to them. Not so much if you just 'show up' and don't talk to them at all.. And you can't willfully desecrate or destroy said cemetery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msgsing
Unless you have some extraordinary claim of historical significance in time no one will a memory of you. Cremation, ashes into the sea perhaps. Cemeteries are routinely repurposed into parking lots, housing developments and other uses. Your immediate kin will remember you but after that you are lost to the world.
Again.. i'd say this is less likely now. Now, no one is going to have specific memories of you, but.. They'll be able to access a WHOLE lot of information about you. Photos of people from the 1800's have mostly been lost to time.. But.. Someone like me, who was born in 1973.. I mean, I'm going to be in school yearbooks from.. 1977(or so) to 1991.. God knows.. They might store DL photos and wind up releasing those in years to come. We'll all have Birth and Death certificates available online 100 years from now.. Census records, now that we fill those out online and they're not handwritten will be much better than those from the 1800's that were misspelled or had bad handwriting that you couldn't read.
Someone might even archive all this and tie it to us via real names vs screen names and our great great grandkids might wind up reading our posts here.
Wonder how that'll fly? Someone is searching their great great grandfather and find archived onlyfans content of him spanking it online.. lol..
I have seen a huge difference in how cemeteries are handled in different regions. My family is buried in a urban church cemetery -- or rather originally a church cemetery but now only affiliated by name. It is large, grassy, shaded, and well maintained. Country cemeteries in the Midwest are a mixed bag. Some are well maintained, and some seem almost forgotten. Unmarked graves re common in both. Black cemeteries have been abused in a few cases. Now I live in a majority Hispanic community -- high desert, very dry. There is little shade and almost no grass, but the graves are tended and decorated routinely. A family member comes and rakes the dirt and refreshes the decorations. I actually only know of one cemetery that was destroyed for an interstate highway. The graves were moved -- or as many as could be found. There were a lot of complaints about it. Country cemeteries, often those on the great plains or open prairies, are the refuge of native plants and wildflowers since they were probably never plowed.
I have seen a huge difference in how cemeteries are handled in different regions. My family is buried in a urban church cemetery -- or rather originally a church cemetery but now only affiliated by name. It is large, grassy, shaded, and well maintained. Country cemeteries in the Midwest are a mixed bag. Some are well maintained, and some seem almost forgotten. Unmarked graves re common in both. Black cemeteries have been abused in a few cases. Now I live in a majority Hispanic community -- high desert, very dry. There is little shade and almost no grass, but the graves are tended and decorated routinely. A family member comes and rakes the dirt and refreshes the decorations. I actually only know of one cemetery that was destroyed for an interstate highway. The graves were moved -- or as many as could be found. There were a lot of complaints about it. Country cemeteries, often those on the great plains or open prairies, are the refuge of native plants and wildflowers since they were probably never plowed.
Won't disagree with any of that. But, the region often dictates how much maintenance a cemetery needs as well.
Here in the southeast.. Magnolias are almost a given at a cemetery. The problem.. Many of those magnolias are now 50-100 or more years old and.. Magnolias not only drop a whole lot of debris, from cones to leaves that can stain quite a bit to limbs and the like.. Many cemeteries are removing them now. Oh yeah, and their roots run a long way, so.. Those can topple/damage markers as well.
but, we also get goodly amounts of rain and there's usually a fair amount of 'settling' of markers causing them to lean and/or topple over. Then, yes you have some vandalism. Markers are generally Georgia marble or granite. Marble was common until about the 1920's, then it started switching to granite. And then you have the lichen.
Unmarked graves.. MUCH more of a problem in the black community. I'm sure financials play a part here. Always say.. If I win the Powerball.. The charity I start will be to provide free tombstones for those who want them. nothing fancy, but, everyone should have something that says they were here. Don't get me wrong.. Some people just ELECT to not have their grave marked. I don't understand it.. Only thing I can think of is if they didn't want their family to have to pay for it. But, basic markers aren't horrendous. But.. One thing to bring up is that up until the 70's or so.. It was unusual for a black persons death to even get an obituary in the newspaper. When I research someone and they were black and died before 1970, I often have to pull someone in who specializes in searching black families for help. Luckily.. I have a good relationship with such a person. They bring me in for finding old, lost cemeteries because they can't get out and traipse through the woods anymore.. And I bring them in for research. Works out well for us.
The midwest.. What I've noticed about cemeteries there.. The markers almost always seem to be sunken down quite a bit. That's what jumped out at me in Missouri. I don't recall the exact cemetery, but its' the one that Ken Rex McElroy is buried at (My dad has a very odd fascination with that guy) and the two things that jumped out at me were how depressed in the ground the flat markers were (Brass, military style markers) and the number of ants. But, this was a 'commercial' cemetery and could have been an outlier. Church cemeteries may be different. And yes, I'm in fire ant country and am expressing shock at the number of ants somewhere else. At least those ants out there didn't attack you like a swarm of yellowjackets. The latter HAS actually happened to me at a cemetery here.
Northeast.. Much the same as the south.. Except they have more older cemeteries. In the south, it was common to be buried on a family farm rather than a town cemetery or something. Here.. It was more common to have a family plot on the homestead. Many of which have been lost to time, unfortunately.
The desert regions.. Really odd cemeteries, at least based on what I'm used to. They mostly just look untouched. Fascinated me that you might see a marker from 1870 and it looks.. Besides having a little dirt on it, as new as it did then. Here, that thing would have 5 layers of dirt, moss, mold and everything else on it, and you probably wouldn't even recognize that it was originally white. And yes.. The part about not having grass or trees was freaky to me. I put California in this region as well. Mausoleums are also.. MUCH bigger in California. My great grandfather is in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica in the mausoleum there.. We rarely have mausoleums that.. grand, I suppose is the word.. here. Cremation niches are a much newer thing here as well. They exist, but nowhere NEAR the number that CA has. Of course.. We have FAR more cheap land for burials here than they do in California.
I'm told.. In places like South Korea, cemeteries are usually on hills. Land that can't be used for other purposes.
I have always been interested in cemeteries. Some are well kept, others not. Richmond VA presents some contrasts. Hollywood Cemetery is well maintained. Two US Presidents are buried there as is Jefferson Davis and it has a Confederate soldiers section. Oakwood and other cemeteries had fences put around them to prevent grave robbing of the African American sections (cemeteries were segregated). Bodies were needed for nearby Medical College of Virginia (MCV). Once slavery ended, they needed a new source. Discarded bodies are still found at MCV. https://emsw.vcu.edu/about/
In 2022 graves were found at the walls of the Powder Magazine in Williamsburg, VA during its restoration. It is believed they date from 1862, forensic work is being done. We would play on the cannons and climb over the walls of the magazine as kids, that was long before it became so touristy so we could do it. The soldiers will be given individual plots once the research and databases are scoured to find relatives. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org...ions/magazine/
I have always been interested in cemeteries. Some are well kept, others not. Richmond VA presents some contrasts. Hollywood Cemetery is well maintained. Two US Presidents are buried there as is Jefferson Davis and it has a Confederate soldiers section. Oakwood and other cemeteries had fences put around them to prevent grave robbing of the African American sections (cemeteries were segregated). Bodies were needed for nearby Medical College of Virginia (MCV). Once slavery ended, they needed a new source. Discarded bodies are still found at MCV. https://emsw.vcu.edu/about/
We have something similar. The MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina) uses the Richland County Cemetery for final disposition of remains that were donated to the school 'for science'.
I think just their ashes are scattered there. I know Richland County uses it to bury the cremains of unclaimed bodies.
Pretty neat little marker they have there for those who did donate their bodies..
I learned of a nice little cemetery story in this area when visiting one of the older churches on the county's annual history weekend. An old Dutch Reformed church had closed and the building was sold, but the church had the graves of a dozen people from its early days buried on its grounds. A nearby Episcopal church offered some space in its own cemetery, and the bodies were relocated there. This was around the 1915. The names of those who were reburied were either lost or never passed on.
Decades passed, and while the story of the relocated graves was still in the records, their exact location had never been written down. By the 1990s, it was decided that the old records of who was in the cemetery should be upgraded and put onto a computer, so the work began to make sure they knew who was where.
During the course of informing the parishioners of this process, the story of the graves that came from the old Reformed church came up with the regret that no one now knew where they were located.
But someone did. A parishioner in her 80s stood up and said, "I know where they are." She was ten years old and present when her father and other men from the church received the coffins and dug the graves. She had watched them do it. She pointed to an area at the back of the cemetery and said "They put all those coffins in the ground back there."
The church erected a monument to the former congregants of the long-gone Reformed Church, "their names known only to God", in the section of the cemetery the old lady showed them.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 07-21-2023 at 10:58 PM..
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