Despite the legislation some have posted, believe me there are many gray
areas when dealing with "cemeteries."  In Annapolis we have recently been
dealing with the fact that there are burials everywhere.  Raises the
question of whether a single unmarked burial is a cemetery?  Additionally,
disarticulated human remains are not uncommon to find.  Raises the question
of whether finding human remains consistutes a "burial" even when there is
no real burial context (grave shaft, etc.).  As well, some of these finds
have occured in places known to have been cemeteries in the 17th and early
18th centuries, but are unmarked and thought to have been moved in the late
18th century.

There was a post about practicality, and this has become a key issue in
dealing with, and defining, cemeteries around here.

Tom

----------------------------
Thomas W. Cuddy, PhD
Curator of Archaeology
Historic Annapolis Foundation
18 Pinkney Street
Annapolis, MD  21401
(410) 626-1032
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ned Heite" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 6:28 AM
Subject: cemetery preservation


> 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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>