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Old graveyard near my house
pendragon1998
Posts: 2,070 ✭✭✭
I live in northeast Georgia and there's an old slave cemetary that's been overgrown by forest over the decades near my house. We were told it was a slave cemetary because the "S"es in the names were carved backwards (neat factoid). I would certainly never dream of digging around over there, but several of the graves have fairly sizeable depressions in the soil (it looks like a stump was removed, but I can't think why one would be). I was just wondering if unscrupulous detectorists might have been around there. Certainly none of you guys would do that, but I thought you might have heard stories of people who do. Other than the morbid sorts of things one would find in an old grave, what appeal could it have for someone?! The cemetary has been IDed by whomever with the state records such things, and I think it's a shame if someone came out and disturbed those graves. I'm sure there are laws against disturbing the area.
My wife and I visited the site a week or two ago. It's on a right of way in a new residential development that my stepfather's developing. He and his partner both felt it was important to protect the site, so they tucked it away in a section of the woods where no one would easily stumble on it. It was a lovely, rather sad area, but peaceful.
My wife and I visited the site a week or two ago. It's on a right of way in a new residential development that my stepfather's developing. He and his partner both felt it was important to protect the site, so they tucked it away in a section of the woods where no one would easily stumble on it. It was a lovely, rather sad area, but peaceful.
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The sunken depressions you mentioned on the graves are not where stumps were removed- it's where the graves themselves have sunken. (Over time, the old wooden coffins would rot and the pressure of the earth would cause them to collapse, leaving a depression). You can often spot gravesites in an old cemetery by these faint depressions, long after the old tombstones have disappeared. In the case of slave cemeteries, the markers were often made of wood and disappeared over time, and the cemeteries fell into neglect and were swallowed up by overgrowth, and sometimes the depressions were never refilled by caretakers. I visited one such place once (though I didn't dig there), and it was sad and a little spooky, since the sunken grave depressions were quite deep, and I had to be careful not to accidentally wallow into the graves while walking through the brush and fallen leaves!
<< <i>I was just wondering if unscrupulous detectorists might have been around there. Certainly none of you guys would do that, but I thought you might have heard stories of people who do. >>
Huh. I used to specialize in old churchyards and cemeteries in North Carolina. The old garden cemeteries saw double duty as parks and were often a picnicking spot for the living. They produce all sorts of nice old coins. There is nothing wrong with hunting in a cemetery if you have permission to be there and you aren't carrying any digging implement larger than a pocket-sized trowel. You aren't digging deep enough to disturb any human remains. My best detecting site in Western North Carolina was an 87-acre cemetery and city park that had been laid out in 1885. The manager gave us permission to dig there when he saw that all I was using was a hunting knife.
Not all cemeteries are productive, though. When I left NC and moved to coastal Georgia, I was at first excited, because the cemeteries here are far older than the ones I hunted up there. Up there where I'd been, few gravestones predated the Civil War, but down here in SE GA, we have some that predate the Revolutionary War. However, I soon found that the old colonial cemeteries are not as productive as the later, Victorian garden cemeteries, at least in my limited experience. This may be due to the fact that cemeteries were rather noxious places before the mid-1800s; our cemeteries held some mass burials from yellow fever epedimics. They were places avoided by the living, whereas the late-1800s garden cemeteries, with their parklike atmosphere, were more frequented and therefore have more lost coins and jewelry along the lanes and paths. I would imagine old slave cemeteries wouldn't have much in the way of finds, since they probably were not as visited. After all, only the living drop coins- the dead just rest there. And you're not gonna mess with anything in their pockets.
One of my most fascinating finds happened to come up in an old churchyard, which also happened to be a cemetery. The church sat atop a hill, surrounded by the cemetery, as is often the case with old churchyards. It is possible this item was lost there long, long before there was ever a church or a cemetery on the site, though.
<< <i>The sunken depressions you mentioned on the graves are not where stumps were removed- it's where the graves themselves have sunken. (Over time, the old wooden coffins would rot and the pressure of the earth would cause them to collapse, leaving a depression). >>
I considered that, but not having much experience with old graveyards, I expected the depression from a rotted-out coffin to be more man-shaped. These were roughly circular holes about 2 feet in diameter and maybe a foot or a foot and a half deep, about where I'd expect the person's chest to be in the grave.
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<< <i>I was just wondering if unscrupulous detectorists might have been around there. Certainly none of you guys would do that, but I thought you might have heard stories of people who do. >>
Huh. I used to specialize in old churchyards and cemeteries in North Carolina. >>
I guess what I was thinking was that someone was trying to get into the grave itself. I suppose that if a detectorist was only searching the immediate subsurface layer, and with the owner's permission, that wouldn't be a problem at all.
I read your chinese medallion story and it was fascinating!
Actually, I'd be fascinated to learn what might have been dropped there over the last century or so. Most of the graves are so worn (they used local stone for the makers) that you can barely read the inscriptions any more. I also happened upon a section of old stone wall in another part of town the other day. It's forgotten amongst the small, weedy property boundary between a Bojangles and a strip mall. I think the area used to be a cotton field. I wonder if anything is still beside it.
At the turn of the century it was common practice to use _massive amounts of Arsenic in the embalming fluid.. This practice became popular during the civil war & even creosote was used as a preservative...
This Arsenic is STILL present in these cemeteries in quantities that the EPA would consider _dangerous to the ground water or human contact..
I love old cemetaries and have spent alot of time researching them. Remember that around the turn of the century people used to have picnics in cemetaries, many had churches, schools and playgrounds in the cemetary.
<< <i>Most of the graves are so worn (they used local stone for the makers) that you can barely read the inscriptions any more. >>
Up in Western NC (and likely in your part of North GA, and for all I know, many other parts of the country), the older country cemeteries and slave cemeteries often have markers made from local stone, with few or no inscriptions visible. That's how you can tell a really old cemetery from before the Civil War. Down here on the coast, however, there is no stone, so wooden markers were used for lower-status graves, and those disappeared with time. (Wooden markers were probably used some up there, too, but not as much, since fieldstones were available).
That would be highly uncomfortable to run into someone who was there visiting a loved ones grave while you are down on your knees digging in the dirt LOL.
<< <i>I think I would just feel to weird digging in a cemetery.
That would be highly uncomfortable to run into someone who was there visiting a loved ones grave while you are down on your knees digging in the dirt LOL. >>
It's true- some people are squeamish about it. And even if you aren't, you might run across someone who is. I once had a lady go into a tirade, berating me for being sacrilegious by digging in the cemetery (never mind that I had permission and only used a hunting knife with a short blade as a digging tool.) She continued her rant for a while, until I pointed out that her unleashed dog was hunkered down and crapping on somebody's grave. Even that didn't shut her up, but it took a little bit of the wind out of her sails.
That old cemetery was a bonanza for me since it had never been detected. However, in retrospect, I have since learned that there are plenty of other productive sites to go to. I don't often hunt cemeteries anymore.
But up where I used to live, old cemeteries were some of the oldest public property you could put a coil to.
<< <i>How many hankies were hauled out of a pants pocket to give to a sobbing widow and pulled a few old coins out with it? >>
Believe me, that thought was always on my mind.