Terry,
I am sorry that you perceived my response as an attack. It does seem
strange to me that the head of archaeology at Purdue stated at a conference
I attended last year at Shelbyville, that it was 2-3 years after the
disinterment that the remains from Young cemetery (4 adults, as I recall)
were reinterred. It is easy to loose track of time; could you be mistaken?
This 2-3 year time period is not at all unusual. They were examined,
according to the Purdue archaeologist, to determine, diseases of their time
period, caused by nutritional deficiencies, which they by the way found in
these "specimens." Read as an example the report on the Rhoads cemetery
which was destroyed when Duke Reality decided to build a huge warehouse on
the spot that cemetery, holding the remains of 43 individuals, rested.
http://www.starnews.com/news/editorial/99/july/0710st_shaw.html It was 2
years that those remains were stored in a lab at the University of
Indianapolis.
I cannot prove that gravestones from St. John's were thrown over into the
riverbank. Even if I found gravestones on the riverbank, that would not
prove how they got there. I only stated "Up until summer of last year, it
was legal in Indiana for a landowner to bulldoze gravemarkers on his land
and plant crops on the graves." This just illustrates my point that the
state of Indiana had no law against destroying a cemetery in that manner up
until last year. Frankly, I think the building projects should be planned
around the cemeteries without disturbing them. The cemeteries were there
first.
I am not attacking anyone, but I am passionate about preserving and
restoring cemeteries. I might consider an attack if you are vandalizing a
cemetery....
Debby
At 05:18 PM 02/26/2000 -0500, you wrote:
Actually they were taken to a lab at Purdue University to make sure
all
the parts were present and, yes, to run some tests. But they were not
reinterred 2 or 3 years down the road; they were reinterred in a very
touching ceremony which I attended not long after they were examined.
They were examined to make sure nothing was missing because of the
length of time they had been in the ground and because the coffins
disintegrated when they were removed from the ground.
If you can prove that the gravestones were thrown over into the
riverbank, then I encourage to you to do so. So far, there has been no
evidence presented that proves this. I have examined the area and even
though limestone does disintegrate with time, there would still be
evidence of the gravestones being there. I have visited many old, and
not so old, private cemetaries where old gravestones were propped up
beside the fence line and trees, to make room for mowing. The cemetary
in Camden IN is a prime example of this; it is disgraceful how these
people who were expecting to be remembered all their lives by these
stones now lie in an unmarked grave due to convenience.
Please respond in a positive and polite way when you write back to this
note; no one likes to be attacked in a forum such as this and that is
just the way I perceived your letter.
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