Delaware appears to be out front on the cemetery issue, although
there is regrettably no public agency to care for "abandoned"
graveyards.

Thanks largely to the Indian population's activists, we have an
unmarked burials law that has some real teeth in it.  The penalties
for disturbing any unmarked human remains, prehistoric or historic,
are distressing enough that the builders are very wary of going
anywhere near a burial ground.

We just finished delineating a wholly unmarked cemetery in the back
yard of an historic house site. The county planning commission
required the developer to hire an archaeologist and check out rumors
of a cemetery.  We spent much of the winter on the site and
delineated, by one count, over 170 graves dating from the seventeenth
through nineteenth century.  My own unmarked family graveyard, with
Revolutionary War hero, was delineated by the University of Delaware
for the Department of Transportation.

Cemetery delineation, even when there are gravestones in place, has
been a booming business for us. That's because the county planners
are taking seriously their mandate to protect gravesites.  The
developers have been very cordial with us, and they don't generally
behave as if they are being imposed upon.  I have suggested, in jest,
that we should adopt a company motto of "You croak, we poke," when
people ask what we do.  Generally, we take a backhoe or Gradall and
circle the marked part of the graveyard, not infrequently finding
outlying graves.  We estimate that more than three-quarters of the
burials in Delaware before the Civil War are unmarked.  The
proportion may be even higher.  In marked family plots, only a small
minority of graves are marked.

As for the old churchyards, Delaware has done nothing; some private
tombstone surveys are preserved and a few have been published.  I'm
trustee of a cemetery, formerly an Old School Baptist churchyard
where by parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and
great-great-grandparents are interred.  A bus recently drove into the
yard, but our trustees were unable to get much from the insurance
company because the stones belong to the families and not to the
trustees.  The insurance company lawyers ruled that only the heirs
could file claims for damage to the stones, so the destroyed stones
have been replaced with pitiful little thousand-dollar markers.

Every state should, it seems, address the heritage problem of these
old graveyards.  I believe a state oversight agency, with power to do
things positively, would be a step in the right direction. Moreover,
it would be politically popular, even with the developers.

What is happening in the other states with old cemeteries threatened
by development bigtime?
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