I remember the thrill I felt when I first found the grave of my great-great-grandmother. Nobody had really expected me to locate it. Later, it was also rewarding when I was able to draw a detailed map to make it possible for two of my great-aunts to make the trip to Minnesota, find the small, defunct cemetery, and visit her burial site. They had been there as children, but it was so long ago it had almost passed from memory.

With the commercial nature of modern-day burials, and the organization of sizable urban and suburban cemeteries, locating recent generations of deceased individuals is less of a problem. However, finding grave sites of ancestors from the nineteenth century is often an adventure. Even if they lived in cities at the time, the cemeteries they were buried in may have had to make way for new construction, requiring the relocation of graves. Every major genealogical guide, on and offline, includes information on how to locate records to help you find early cemeteries; in addition, there are books and websites specific to cemetery research with more detail. Updating the effort, online directories are beginning to list the GPS coordinates (global positioning system) for cemeteries, and a recent article in Genealogical Computing highlighted the use of a GPS to help researchers locate identified cemeteries.

Unfortunately, our pioneer ancestors, who braved the wilderness to found small settlements or individual homesteads, may be buried in rural cemeteries that have disappeared from the landscape. In some cases the small towns they lived in no longer exist, and current residents of these locales are often unaware that there was once a pioneer settlement in the area; they have no clue to the location of a former cemetery. Family farms that grew from early homesteads have been sold and resold, so the existence of an old family burial plot may not be known to present-day owners. Sometimes the only way these early cemeteries are discovered is when human remains are inadvertently dug up during construction.

Preservation Efforts
There are efforts underway to locate and document early pioneer cemeteries. State agencies and cemetery preservation societies have initiated projects, enlisting the aid of genealogists and other volunteers to search out and identify forgotten burial places. One example is the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites, where the webpage for Anne Arundel County gives a list of cemeteries that have been heard of with some ideas of where they might be, and a request that anybody with information should e-mail a contact person. Indiana’s Cemetery Registry is handled by a single person in the Department of Natural Resources; if someone locates an undocumented cemetery, there is a form that can be filled out and mailed in, and the information may eventually make it onto the website. Similar projects exist for many other states, plus one for the Oregon Trail. Although numerous cemetery directories are online, considering the technology that is available today, it’s surprising that data collection for these endeavors are basically paper and pencil activities depending on serendipity.

High-tech methods are being tried in a few places. Remote sensing surveys may be able to locate and determine the boundaries of unidentified or poorly marked cemeteries. Work done on two cemeteries in southern Indiana for the Knox County Cemetery Commission is documented on the Historic Archaeological Research (HAR) website. Photos show some of the headstones that had been removed and piled in disarray around a tree—a not uncommon situation with these old burial sites.

Ground penetrating radar, ground resistivity, and electromagnetic conductivity are three noninvasive geophysical methods commonly used to detect unidentified cemeteries, while thermal infrared imaging is a more expensive remote sensing technology. Electromagnetic conductivity, or EMC, was employed for the Knox County cemetery surveys. The EM energy can penetrate to a depth of about five feet, and changes in conductivity are reflected in the readings taken during a survey. “What we are looking for is a man-made symmetrical disturbance that is not typically found in nature,” states Rich Green of HAR, who conducted the surveys in Knox County. “Most of the time we are concerned with delimiting the extent of a cemetery, not marking individual grave shafts.”

However, he goes on to say, “If you do get good data, and it’s not compromised by other anomalies, like boulders, tree root cavities and metal artifacts, you will be able to discern the symmetry of adult burials.” The image from the EMC survey of Reel Cemetery in Knox County graphically demonstrates what this technology is capable of. The mapped results show several anomalies, the bright blue human body and coffin shapes clearly identifying individual graves. Some of the smaller blue marks might be graves of children. Combining this data with written records may enable headstones to be replaced on the graves they belong to.

This was the goal when HAR was asked to survey the Johnson’s Island Confederate POW cemetery in northern Ohio. Unfortunately, as Rich Green describes, “There are certain variables that are intrinsic to every site.” And these variables may impact the efficacy of remote sensing technologies for a particular site. Factors such as soil type and consistency, the presence of metal objects, and surface terrain can affect the success of a survey. On Johnson’s Island, many graves bordered directly on the wrought-iron fence surrounding the cemetery, and several graves contained metal coffins. Despite these problems, HAR was asked to complete the survey. Although the results identified additional burials, there was interference within ten feet of the fence and definition was also lost for three to four graves around each metal coffin.

Burials at Risk
On the other hand, if the location of a cemetery is unclear, the presence of a metal coffin will make it easier to detect. Sometimes small pioneer cemeteries have visible features, and a farmer may ask a company such as HAR to survey it so they can fence off the area. Unfortunately, not all landowners are that respectful. In some cases farmers need more arable land, so they remove tombstones and plough the area, masking the evidence of an early cemetery on their property.

As metropolitan areas expand, encroaching on the surrounding countryside, a growing number of early graveyards are put at risk. Sometimes the laws to safeguard cemeteries backfire. If a developer has expressed interest in buying property, local landowners may remove gravestones to hide the fact that there is an old cemetery on the grounds.

Most of the work that is being done to locate lost burials is carried out in advance of highway construction or major development projects. Federal and state laws protecting cemeteries make this type of exploration expedient prior to big construction jobs, because it is more cost effective than having to stop work in the event that human remains are found when digging. This is especially true since the likelihood is high that a large project will impinge on gravesites. When an unidentified burial site is found, sometimes it can be avoided, though, oftentimes building plans or highway routes may necessitate that the graves be relocated. Research is done through local records to try to identify the remains. However, since these lost cemeteries are considered abandoned, there is no legal requirement to notify descendants of the deceased, even if they could be found, so there is no attempt to advertise the discovery. If the internment is of archaeological interest, the remains may be studied before being reburied. In some cases research on the remains and the objects buried with them may enable identification of a possible related community, whose members then have the genealogical good fortune of, in effect, being found by dead ancestors.

High-Tech Solution
Ideally, if states could afford to do more to recover our lost heritage of pioneer cemeteries, an idea suggested by Rich Green could be a real boon for genealogists. He proposed a trial project using remote sensing technology to locate unidentified cemeteries in one or two counties. The data collected could be integrated into a GIS program. GIS stands for Geographical Information System, a software program that combines database features with digital mapping, allowing analysis and querying of spatially related data.

For an example of the mapping element of GIS in action, explore the National Park Service’s Interactive Map Center. The Park Locator gives you a variety of choices, including national cemeteries, that can be mapped. The Park Atlas can then overlay the view with a variety of other detail.

A website that offers a visual tour of a GIS application designed for cemetery management can give you an idea of search and report options that GIS can also provide. Take the visual tour of Spatial Generations’ software features, and imagine having a choice of data and maps from all the pioneer cemeteries in a county, or even a state.

GIS is very sophisticated and powerful software. It would have the capacity to integrate all the data about rediscovered pioneer cemeteries. You could query it to find information from gravestones and other records, view digital photos of the sites, and create maps derived from GPS coordinates and remote sensing data overlaying a USGS map of the area. This could provide an impressive solution to saving our heritage, and making it available for genealogical and historical researchers.

1. Beau Sharbrough, “Traveling with GPS Navigation,” GC 22:4 (Apr-Jun 2003), 7.
2. Charles M. Niquette, et al., “Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Comments on the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Grave Relocation Procedures,” Cultural Research Analysts (1996).

Candace L. Doriott has served on the board of directors of the Detroit Society for Genealogical Research. She can be contacted at cdoriott@earthlink.net.

Return to the January/February/March 2004 Genealogical Computing Table of Contents.