My mind keeps popping up issues. During the San Diego State University  field 
archaeology at the 1782 chapel within the ruins of the 1769-1835 Royal  
Presidio de San Diego, we learned that after 1835 people relocated down near the  
river, but continued burying their dead at the old Catholic cemetery. As the  
adobe walls of the chapel dissolved and sloughed over to fill the rooms with  
rubble, people began burying their dead by digging through the wall rubble and  
had to hack through the old tile floors to bury the dead beneath. The floor 
must  have been too shallow to bury on top at that point in time, which says 
something  about the cultural decision of how deep is deep enough. Paul Ezell's 
archaeology  field school had removed all the rubble fill inside the chapel by 
the time I  arrived in the Spring of 1968. You could clearly see about 
fifteen burials  hacked through the floor. Two turned out to be the remains of Henry 
Delano Fitch  and his daughter, both were recorded as having died in 1849. 
 
Ezell contacted the Fitch family, which had branches in the United States  
and Monterrey, Mexico. A large contingent came up for a reunion at the grave  
site. Their consensus was they wanted Henry and the daughter to remain buried in 
 the park. This happened before I arrived, but Ezell assigned me to the crew 
to  rebury Fitch. We covered the skeleton with six inches of decomposed 
gravel, then  sealed it with about four inches of cement. I recall we did a pretty 
sloppy  job of smoothing the surface, as we really did not know cement work and 
how fast  the stuff set up. After it set a bit, Ezell scratched something 
into the  surface. When it all dried, we then buried it and none are the wiser as 
to where  Fitch and his daughter are buried. 
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
 
 
In a message dated 6/24/2008 7:46:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

If you  are interested you might contact the Texas Department of 
Transportation  (TxDOT) and ask about the urban cemetery they 
constructed a highway over  years ago in Dallas County. Evidence was 
found where grave stones were  used in the fill and also the concrete. 
I apologize for the lack of an  address.





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