The Mad Genealogist

By Jake Gibson & Steve Centanni, Published June 17, 2010 on FOXNews.com

ARLINGTON, Va. — Several discarded headstones recently discovered in a creek bed near Arlington National Cemetery have left Department of Defense officials scrambling for answers.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called the discovery “alarming and concerning.”

Pentagon officials as well as officials at the Arlington National Cemetery had no idea about the existence of the headstones until they were made aware by a Washington Post story.

Can someone please identify this cemetery. Below is the email I received

 Dear Correspondent,
While I was stationed at Fort Chaffee for basic training Oct 3 – 8 Dec, 1956, I remember seeing a cemetery that had a stone arch at the entrance. As I recall, it was located on the South side of the fort. Can you possibly help me to identify this cemetery?
With kind regards,
John T. Gerlosky, CWO W3 USA Retired

Your ancestor may have had a wooden marker that has long since deteriorated. So too, his gravestone may have been destroyed or moved. Probably the bestplace to start would be with the local genealogists in Onondaga County. It may be that his stone has toppled or was vandalized, but that it was read and recorded at some earlier point in history. If this is the case, then the row location may have also been documented and you are well on your way to identifying his grave site.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson lambasted the four alleged “graveyard robbers” charged with digging up graves and dismembering bodies buried at a suburban Chicago cemetery in a moneymaking scheme.

The four cemetery workers are accused of taking cash payments from unsuspecting clients for plots of land, falsifying deeds, excavating existing graves and dumping the bones and remains in the back of the cemetery, authorities said at a news conference.

They would then allegedly bury the new corpses in the already-used graves at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. Police called conditions at the historic cemetery “startling and revolting.”

A story from the Associated Press this morning….

MIAMI  —  Historians and archaeologists want to know who was buried in an apparently forgotten cemetery uncovered in a Miami construction site.

Construction crews uncovered bones, crumbled headstones and nails and metal handles from coffins in the site off Interstate 95. A search of the lot in April failed to uncover any names, records or documents detailing who had been buried there. Only two commercial maps from 1925 and 1936 label the site as a cemetery.

Some longtime residents say there was once an informal burial ground for blacks at the site. It’s at the edge of some of Miami’s oldest neighborhoods.

I read this story from the Huntsville Times this morning. Can witching sticks find unmarked graves? I know they are used to find wells and underground water sources. I don’t kmow how it would work on an unmarked grave though. Has anyone else heard of this method?

Here is the story below

40-year search for great-grandfather’s graves comes to end
Thursday, February 26, 2009 By MIKE MARSHALL, Times Staff Writer mike.marshall@htimes.com

ESTILLFORK – It was just after 9 on a Tuesday morning when about 25 people began their journey to the graves in Reid’s Cove.

You here the story sometimes how developers and County work crews plow over and cover up old cemeteries in the way. Stuff like that makes me mad but it doesnt really hit home. But today I received this email from a distant cousin (a decedent of Charles Wood):

I drove down Boone Road the other day, taking an alternate route home, and noticed that a few trees were being cut near the Wood Family cemetery.   The cemetery is back behind a house and not really visible from the road.

Here is the question. Who has more rights? A live landowner or a dead former landowner?

I have seen many stories of genealogist finding old family cemeteries only to have the landowner refuse permission to visit or later willfully destroy the cemetery, Farmers have plowed old family graves over, new construction for roads and homes have quietly paved over these sites. This quite literally “pisses me off” to no end when I see or hear these stories. Anyways back to the story at hand….