The Mad Genealogist

The Rev. Jesse Jackson lambasted the four alleged “graveyard robbers” charged with digging up graves and dismembering bodies buried at a suburban Chicago cemetery in a moneymaking scheme.

The four cemetery workers are accused of taking cash payments from unsuspecting clients for plots of land, falsifying deeds, excavating existing graves and dumping the bones and remains in the back of the cemetery, authorities said at a news conference.

They would then allegedly bury the new corpses in the already-used graves at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. Police called conditions at the historic cemetery “startling and revolting.”

“The human degradation is immeasurable,” Jackson told reporters. “There should be no bail for these graveyard thieves. They deserve a special place in hell.”

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said workers at Burr Oak allegedly tampered with about 300 graves, digging them up, dumping the bodies and reselling the plots to unsuspecting members of the public.

The three men and one woman were charged Thursday with one count each of dismembering a human body. Dart said the woman was the cemetery’s office manager and was at the center of the operation.

“This was not done in a delicate way,” he told reporters. “They would excavate the grave and the entire site and then dump the remains wherever they found a place to do it in the back of the cemetery.”

He says in other cases the graves were “pounded down” and another person was buried on top. Burr Oak is the final resting place of many famous African-Americans, including lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann, as well as Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson.

Hundreds of confused and angry family members are looking for answers after the arrests. Authorities in the southern Chicago suburb of Alsip were directing crowds at Burr Oak Cemetery Thursday and taking reports from families. Among the family members is 54-year-old Ralph Gunn, whose father and nephew were buried at Burr Oak but whose bodies are missing. Gunn says their headstones are gone. And he says he can’t fathom why anyone would want to dig up bodies.  Authorities say most of the problems are from a secluded area of the cemetery that contains older plots.

Click here for more on this story from MyFOXChicago.com

A story from the Associated Press this morning….

MIAMI  —  Historians and archaeologists want to know who was buried in an apparently forgotten cemetery uncovered in a Miami construction site.

Construction crews uncovered bones, crumbled headstones and nails and metal handles from coffins in the site off Interstate 95. A search of the lot in April failed to uncover any names, records or documents detailing who had been buried there. Only two commercial maps from 1925 and 1936 label the site as a cemetery.

Some longtime residents say there was once an informal burial ground for blacks at the site. It’s at the edge of some of Miami’s oldest neighborhoods.

The African-American committee of Dade Heritage Trust planned a community meeting Monday to begin the search for descendants of the people buried at the site.

I read this story from the Huntsville Times this morning. Can witching sticks find unmarked graves? I know they are used to find wells and underground water sources. I don’t kmow how it would work on an unmarked grave though. Has anyone else heard of this method?

Here is the story below

40-year search for great-grandfather’s graves comes to end
Thursday, February 26, 2009 By MIKE MARSHALL, Times Staff Writer mike.marshall@htimes.com

ESTILLFORK – It was just after 9 on a Tuesday morning when about 25 people began their journey to the graves in Reid’s Cove.

Many of them climbed aboard all-terrain vehicles for the two-mile ride through the woods and springs of Paint Rock Valley.

They had grown up hearing about Reid’s Cove, a clump of poplars and hickories at the base of a mountain.

But none of them had tried to go there until Donald Langston, a retired oil-company employee from Winchester, Tenn., used some witching sticks to solve a family mystery.

A tip from a long-time barber in the valley had been the key. The barber, Monroe Mullican, now 97, told Langston that his great-grandfather was buried near a spring in Reid’s Cove.

As a child, Mullican, then a resident of Reid’s Cove, had eaten several meals at the home built by Langston’s great-grandfather, Hiram Langston, a veteran of the Civil War.

In the yard of the home was Hiram Langston’s grave. Buried next to him was James T. Langston, Hiram’s first child.

James T. Langston was 1 when he died on April 19, 1867, six years before Hiram’s death.

“Follow the left side of the mountain and go to the back of the cove until you get to the spring,” Mullican told Donald Langston.

With witching sticks in hand, Langston followed the directions on a day in the late fall.

He found the spring at the end of the cove, just as Mullican had told him. The house was gone and there was no sign of a headstone in the thick underbrush.

Langston reached for his witching sticks, metal rods used mainly to locate water.

“The way I found out about these, I had been to a cemetery and met a man who’d been in the plumbing business,” Langston said. “He went to his car and got these sticks. He said they work on graves, too.”

The sticks worked on Langston’s first trip into Reid’s Cove. Within 10 minutes, the sticks crossed – Langston’s sign that he had found his great-grandfather’s grave.

“That’s the only thing it could be,” he said.

Because it was early November, almost deer-hunting season in Alabama, Langston decided to wait until February to dig up the graves of Hiram and James T. Langston.

His plan was to exhume their remains and bury them in Clay Cemetery in Princeton.

“I’m not going into Reid’s Cove during hunting season,” he said. “I’d rather face the snakes than the hunters. All these mountains are infested with hunters, and most have no idea about safety.”

40-year search

The search for Hiram Langston’s grave began, more or less, with a clue more than 40 years ago.

Just before his death in 1966, William Hiram Langston II, known as Uncle Bill, gave Donald Langston the location of the grave.

“My father’s buried in Reid’s Cove, in the yard of an old house,” Donald Langston recalled Uncle Bill saying,

Uncle Bill was born on Dec. 27, 1873, four months after Hiram Langston, his father, died.

His mother, Pormalla, raised Bill and two older children until she re-married in 1875.

“Donald’s had this in mind for 40 years,” said Ozell Womack, Donald Langston’s older sister. “But you know how people are, keep putting things off what need to be done.”

Around 10:30 on Tuesday, it was finally time to act. Donald Langston cranked his all-terrain vehicle and led the procession of four-wheelers into Reid’s Cove.

In front of him were two men from a funeral home in Winchester, hauling a backhoe on the trailer of the truck.

One of the men, Jim Cortner, the co-owner of the funeral home, had excavated the graves of 15 former Civil War soldiers. But none had been in unmarked graves, as Hiram Langston was.

Donald Langston realized the odds of finding the graves intact were slim. The day before, he said, “I think we’ll find soil that’s dissolved – nothing but that. No bones. Maybe a belt buckle.”

Yet, Langston was hopeful as he began the ride into Reid’s Cove.

“I can see the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Digging begins

The dig began just before 11 and lasted just more than 30 minutes.

“Let me get my (witching sticks) out,” Langston told the crowd. “They’re an important part of this.”

Then Langston instructed the people from the funeral home where to dig.

Nudging his foot against a stump, he said, “Start right there.”

Putting his foot against a rock, he said, “Goes to right there.”

The baby, he said, is below a cluster of rocks.

First, there was a prayer by Billy Carl Cagle, an accountant from Princeton.

“We’re gathered here today with Donald Langston and other relatives of the buried Civil War veteran, and we need to ask God to be with us,” he began.

It was 10:48 when the digging began.

Cagle said, “I expect it will be like a big charcoal pile, a black streak.”

But there was no black streak or anything resembling a grave.

“When you move a grave this old,” Cortner said during the dig, “it’s more of a ceremonial thing than the moving of the actual grave.”

Langston walked past edge of the dig, holding his witching sticks, trying to find some sort of sign.

“I told you we might not find anything,” he said. “I’m not shocked. We’ll put dirt in a bag and bury it. That’s what we would have done, anyway. I have no doubt this is the right area.”

There was some mild disappointment when the dig ended at 11:25. One of the relatives said she’d hoped to “find something – a button or a tooth.”

But Donald Langston considered it a success because so many people made their way into Reid’s Cove.

Cortner scooped some dirt into two body bags, and the procession headed for the burial at Clay Cemetery in Princeton.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more people here,” Langston told Cortner.

Only a smattering of relatives -10 or so – attended the burial.

“Well, there will be a bunch here Saturday,” Cortner assured him.

Yes, Langston said. As many as 500 are expected for a reburial and dedication service on Saturday, he said.

Civil War reenactments, including cannons, are scheduled. There will also be a three-gun artillery salute, a salute to Dixie and the unveiling of the marker.

As the burial ended on Tuesday, Cortner wedged Hiram Langston’s marker into the ground and looked at the top of the headstone.

“Y’all know why the Confederates got a pointed top and the Union has a rounded top?” he said. “So the Yankees can’t come by and sit on ‘em.”

You here the story sometimes how developers and County work crews plow over and cover up old cemeteries in the way. Stuff like that makes me mad but it doesnt really hit home. But today I received this email from a distant cousin (a decedent of Charles Wood):

I drove down Boone Road the other day, taking an alternate route home, and noticed that a few trees were being cut near the Wood Family cemetery.   The cemetery is back behind a house and not really visible from the road.

I drove by again this morning and the whole area looks like it has been cut.   I can’t tell if the cemetery has been disturbed or not.   It did not look good to me!

Does anyone know anything about this, or know how I could get in touch with someone regarding the family cemetery?   I have only visited the cemetery once, with a fellow researcher (cousin) from Florida.   He had said that eventually he would like to put a fence around the cemetery to protect it.   I hope it is not too late!!!!!!!!

Charles Wood, bca 1790, was my GGG grandfather.   He and several other family members are buried in the Wood Family Cemetery on Boone Rd. (near the Mt. Carmel community).

The information I have shows:
Charles Wood bought Land Lot #93 in the 4th dist., June 28, 1840 (near Chattahoochee River).   Cemetery on top of hill on this property – known as the “Old Wood Place” – shows two stones “James” and “Charlie” – indicating many graves of early Wood settlers – family of Harriet Wood Hutchins. (Negro slave graves on left of brick wall).

NOTE:   This information was provided to me by Jackie Lambert, CCGS, and I believe was originally compiled by Elsie Ragland Walden-Taylor.   The document is titled:   HUTCHENS Family History 1832-1961 – 129 Years (Formerly spelled “Hutchins”)   Data By:   Elsie Ragland Walden-Taylor.   The document outlines the Hutchens/Hutchins family history, and then contains ‘Notes on Wood History”.   Harriet Susan Wood, daughter of Charles and Mary Wood, married Archy Solomon Hutchins.

Now the question I am asking to the general public is this…. What can be done to protect my ancestors cemetery? What are the current Cemetery laws for the state of Georgia?

HELP ME!

Here is the question. Who has more rights? A live landowner or a dead former landowner?

I have seen many stories of genealogist finding old family cemeteries only to have the landowner refuse permission to visit or later willfully destroy the cemetery, Farmers have plowed old family graves over, new construction for roads and homes have quietly paved over these sites. This quite literally “pisses me off” to no end when I see or hear these stories. Anyways back to the story at hand….

After I reading the article below I have come to this opinion. Progress cannot be stopped. Populations grow and expand. I understand the need to move cemeteries when the need for the common good is there, such as a major road. In this case ALL remains need to be removed and placed in a nearby cemetery and labeled as moved graves. Any other circumstance I think should just learn to deal with the fact an old graveyard is nearby. In this case the landowner needs to learn to live with the graveyard or move on and buy something else. What are your thoughts?
The AP story By LISA RATHKE is below:

HARTLAND, Vt. (AP) — The 130-acre property was exactly what Michel Guite and his family wanted: an old Vermont farm with mountain views, rolling hills and meadows.

There was, however, one wrinkle: The property included a small family cemetery — with the grave of a War of 1812 veteran — surrounded by a fence on a scenic knoll.

His proposal to move the graveyard so he can build a house and barn has set off protests. The town has passed a resolution aimed at blocking the move, a descendant of one occupant of the graveyard is trying to fight him in probate court and opponents including military veterans have asked the town to take over the cemetery and keep it where it is.

“We’re looking for some precedence setting, because we’ve never heard of such a heinous thing,” said Tom Giffin, president of the Vermont Old Cemetery Association.

Cemeteries have been dug up for public good before, to make way for roads and buildings, but “there’s never been the case in the state of Vermont for somebody to move a cemetery to put a house up,” Giffin said.

Opponents say it’s about honoring the dead, and respecting the graveyard as a historical site.

For Guite, it’s about property rights.

“I’ve got nothing against any of those people,” he said. “I’m only going to buy this if a judge says `This is now your land, it’s your private property, you’re allowed to do whatever you want with it. We hope you look after it well, God bless you for it, and nobody has any right to go on your property than they have to go on every other Vermont farm’s property.’”

Guite, 62, of Springfield, Vt., and Greenwich, Conn., signed an option to buy the land in December — contingent on being able to move the graves.

Among other things, he doesn’t want the graves around his three young children. “I feel that it’s improper to have a reminder of the sadness of life so near where children are playing,” he said in February.

Guite wants to move three graves that he said are registered with the town, those of War of 1812 veteran Noah Aldrich II, who died Jan. 15, 1848 at age 61; and Aldrich’s two grandchildren, who died within a day of each other in 1850 during a flu epidemic.

He proposed moving their graves and headstones to another spot — perhaps on his land, perhaps in the town cemetery.

But historians say there are more than three graves, including that of Aldrich’s wife, Lydia. And a previous owner of the land, Jerome King of Hanover, N.H., buried his parents’ cremated remains there before selling the farm in the 1980s, and he has said he also opposes moving the graveyard. Descendants of the Kings visit several times a year.

“I’m against it on principal,” said Jim Bulmer, a member of the Bridgewater American Legion who attended a Probate Court hearing on the issue with about 10 other veterans. “You’ve got a veteran in there from the war of 1812, who has come to his final resting place and let the poor guy rest in peace. He served his country. Why do we need to move cemeteries to accommodate an individual who has a particular agenda?”

Moving bodies is not unusual, as in cases of moving family members closer to each other, said Jimmy Johnston, a lobbyist for the Vermont Funeral Directors’ Association, and owner of the Barber and Lanier Funeral home in Montpelier.

However, Johnston said, “Moving graves of someone who is not a family member, unless it’s eminent domain, I’ve never heard of one being moved to build a house.”

Guite said he followed the law, advertising the move in the newspaper with no objection from immediate relatives.

But in a recent probate court hearing, a judge reached across several generations and designated Marcia Neal of Grand Junction, Colo. — the great, great, great granddaughter of Noah and Lydia Aldrich — as representative for the family.

“I’ve begun to feel a real personal connection to these people,” Neal said.

Although her first inclination would be not to move the graves, she wants to find a solution.

“It has become so involved and sort of complicated. I’d hate to stand in the way of anybody’s right to buy and sell property. I would really like to be able to help reach a solution to the problem. I’m not sure what they would be.”