Sam, thank you for the article.. I went to the newspaper website and I
couldn't view the report because I don't have a $99 a year subscription..
I heard the workers were moving 9 bodies to another part of the cemetery
property, maybe they will find 20 when they are through. Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: inpcrp-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:inpcrp-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
Behalf Of Sam Cline
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 11:43 PM
To: INPCRP
Subject: [INPCRP] White River Township, Johnson County,Mount Auburn Cemetery
a/k/a Pleasant Hill Society Cemetery
Just received this article. Thought I would pass it along for your
information.
Sam Cline
Graves close to S.R. 135 shifted
By JOSEPH S. PETE
Staff writer
August 22, 2008
Moving 19th-century remains to make way for a Center Grove-area road
expansion project will take time and meticulous work.
Archaeology students carried trowels in their back pockets Thursday as
they smoothed earth that had been scraped out by a backhoe at the Mount
Auburn
Cemetery. Over the next few weeks, they'll use the trowels to uncover
remains
that will be repositioned to make way for a widened State Road 135.
Moving the remains could not be avoided because of the state's plan to
expand the highway to five lanes along a 1.9-mile stretch between Stones
Crossing and Curry roads, Indiana Department of Transportation spokesman
Marvin
Jenkins said.
Excavating and moving remains is rare, but it's sometimes done when
roads
are expanded or when coal companies dig new mines, Department of Natural
Resources Senior Archaeologist Amy Johnson said.
Moving remains requires either a court order or a DNR permit.
Last year, INDOT moved a small pioneer-era family cemetery in
northeast
Indianapolis because of the widening of Interstate 69. About 30 remains were
moved to Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
Transferring remains to another cemetery is always a last resort, said
Christopher Koeppel, an administrator with INDOT.
At Mount Auburn Cemetery, workers will exhume and move remains a few
dozen
feet out of the way of the expanded highway. The small cemetery lies between
Dye's Walk Country Club and the highway, and it will be expanded to the
north on
ground owned by Mount Auburn Methodist Church and currently leased by the
country club.
An undetermined number of remains will be reburied where a practice
putting green is. There is a steep incline about 20 feet from the cemetery,
but
soil could be piled up to expand the area if necessary, Koeppel said.
About 20 known graves are listed in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, which
also
is known as Pleasant Hill Society Cemetery, said Linda Talley, genealogy
librarian at the Johnson County Museum of History.
No one knows exactly how many people were interred there, but workers
expect to find as many as dozen more in unmarked graves, Koeppel said.
Almost all of the graves are technically unmarked because all of the
headstones were shoehorned at some point into a fenced-off area about 5 feet
square, Koeppel said.
Mount Auburn doesn't have a record of when or why the headstones were
relocated behind the wrought-iron fence, but Koeppel said it may have been
to
deter vandalism.
A historian will attempt to match the remains with markers, using
church,
genealogy and county records as well as clues that can be extrapolated from
the
bones, such as gender and age, Koeppel said.
It is likely markers will be provided for all relocated remains,
whether
or not they can be identified.
Digging out the remains is expected to take at least three weeks,
provided
there's good weather.
Indiana University-Purdue University-Fort Wayne archaeologist Bob
McCullough and his students are handling the excavation, which is being
documented for historical records. As they dig, the students take photos,
write
notes and draw maps.
Before they started digging, McCullough used radar to determine the
depth,
spacing and relative locations of the graves. The radar only gave a rough
idea
of how many people were buried there and where because it can be disrupted
by
tree roots and metal in the soil.
Some graves were obvious because of depressions in ground made when
the
wooden coffins rotted away, Koeppel said.
Work started this week with a backhoe scooping out about a foot of
soil,
while the archaeology students used shovels to smooth out the ground.
Once the topsoil has been removed, they'll do all the work by hand.
They'll moisten then hand-scrape the earth with their trowels to
reveal
color differences that show where soil was removed and replaced in the
burial
process more than a century ago. That will show the outline of the grave
pits,
which then will be dug out carefully, Koeppel said.
"We want to be patient as we can, so we show the utmost respect and
sensitivity," Koeppel said. "Some people think archaeology is exciting, but
it
can be tedious because it requires meticulous work."
Black tarps will be laid over the site once remains are unearthed. At
that
point, private security will guard the site at nights and on weekends.
State officials will meet with the church in September to discuss how
to
reconfigure the cemetery to move the remains. They'll decide what to put on
headstones of unidentified remains, whether to build a fence and if a
monument
with some historical description should be added.
The remains will be reburied after the cemetery is reconfigured, INDOT
public involvement director Annette Cousert said. A rededication ceremony is
planned after the remains are again laid to rest.
INDOT is attempting to contact any family descendants of the people
buried
at the cemetery. Officials ask family members to contact Koeppel at 232-5161
or
ckoeppel(a)indot.in.gov.
This list is for sharing pioneer cemetery questions, ideas and restoration
projects.
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