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.

Patrick Hallinan, the incoming superintendent of the hallowed cemetery, will be meeting with officials from the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday. The upcoming meeting will “hopefully provide more clarity to the situation regarding the headstones in the creek bank,” Kaitlin Horst, a spokeswoman for Arlington National Cemetery, told Fox News.

Arlington National Cemetery officials think the headstones were placed there to “prevent erosion on the creek bed,” after being replaced and discarded, Horst said.

“It’s important to the new management to take corrective action but also make sure removing the headstones doesn’t destabilize the environment in any way,” she said.

Click here to read more at MyFoxDC.

One of the headstones in question is inscribed with a cross with a circle around it, a style that was discontinued in the late 1980s, leading officials to believe some of these headstones may have been in that creek bed for several decades.

“This is not part of our current headstone disposal policy,” said Horst.

The discovery is another black eye for the nation’s most sacred veterans cemetery, which recently was revealed to have mishandled more than 200 graves.

Click here to read more at MyFoxDC.

 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

Hi Brian
I am doing research for my family, we are African American, we use Ivery after Emancipation. I see a lot of white Ivey’s around my ancestors. I wanted to know some tips or shortcuts, I have been doing a lot online with Ancestry and just looking up names. I have a lot of info on this family, but don’t want to do too much if they aren’t the ones. I just wanted to break our brick wall. I did get the will and appraisment record of Barna Ivey, now I’m working on getting back the sons, William and Malachi. Barna listed his slaves in great detail, I’m sure his sons kept great records like him, none of the names listed was I familiar with, but I will keep just in case later something comes up or other families I might run across might need them later. I work with Susette Cook on my d/c’s. I haved been to Bullock County Courthouse as most of my ancestors and living relatives still live down there. Making a trip in the spring again. I went to our family cemetery and did the history and phototaking on that. I have a website which I run with my cousin Lisa, it’s called Ike-Iveryfamily.org
So hopefully you can go on there and see some of the work I  have done, we are constantly working on it. Hope to hear from you soon, ask any question of me. U seem very knowledgeable abt subject and I could use a veteran to help me, I have been doing this since 2001. Still learning. Hope to hear from you soon, I hope I gave you enough info to respond to.
TrueAnn
Kentucky
“Happy Hunting!”

This was my initial response so someone correct me or add to it please. I will have True Ann come to this page to read the responses .

I am not extremely knowledgeable in AA research but do know enough to get by. I will post your situation on my blog and maybe someone that really knows this area. Off hand I know from my experience that many former slaves took on their former masters last names so I would start with the local Ivery’s for sure. Also check the 1850 and 1860 slave census schedules.

Waiting on the Genealogy community now ;>)……

Lincoln County, MS:

• Vintage Views of Brookhaven MS - http://old-new-orleans.com/Brookhaven.html
• Residences of Old Brookhaven – http://old-new-orleans.com/Brookhaven_2.html
• Whitworth College Brookhaven MS Photos bet 1880-1900 -  http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_Whitworth_College.html
• Vintage Views of Lincoln County, MS -  http://old-new-orleans.com/Lincoln_County.html

Claiborne County, MS:

• Vintage Views of Port Gibson, MS -  http://old-new-orleans.com/Port_Gibson.html

Copiah County, MS:

• Vintage Views of Wesson, MS – http://old-new-orleans.com/Wesson.html

Adams County, MS:

• Concordia – Home of Gov. Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, 1794 – http://old-new-orleans.com/Concordia.html
• Images of Jefferson Military College, Page 2 – http://old-new-orleans.com/jefferson_college2.html
• Historic King’s Tavern, est. 1769, Natchez – http://old-new-orleans.com/Natchez_Kings_Tavern.html
• 1930′s Photos of the following Adams County Houses:
  • Brandon Hall – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_BrandonHall.html
  • William Foster House – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_Foster.html
  • James Foster House – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_Foster_James.html
  • Selma – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_Selma.html
  • Propinquity – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_Propinquity.html

Jefferson County, MS:

• Vintage Views of Fayette, MS – http://old-new-orleans.com/Fayette.html
  Scotland Post Office – Jefferson County 1849 – 1856 – http://old-new-orleans.com/MS_scotland_po.html
  Davis Family Tombstone Photos, Union Church Cemetery – http://old-new-orleans.com/Davis.html

Pearl River County, MS:

• Vintage Photos of Pearl River County MS – http://old-new-orleans.com/Pearl_River_Photos.html

Forrest County, MS:

• Vintage Pictures of Camp Shelby Hattiesburg – http://old-new-orleans.com/Camp_Shelby.html

Walthall County, MS:

• Photo, main street, Tylertown, MS, 1922 – http://old-new-orleans.com/Tylertown.html

Lowndes County, MS:

• Vintage Photo, Military Road, Columbus – http://old-new-orleans.com/MilitaryRoad_Columbus.html

“We don’t know what it is,” Richland County Coroner Gary Watts told South Carolina newspaper The State, adding that the fragments found range from a skull cap to half-inch pieces.

“It probably is Civil War remains, but we’re still going to do this as if it were a crime scene,” Watts told the paper.

The coroner’s office and the State Law Enforcement Division are excavating the steam pipe trench and examining the soil.

The coroner says he expects to know Tuesday if the remains are from the Civil War era. He has an anthropologist working on the case. Watts says the bones could be amputated body parts.

The fragments were found behind DeSaussure College, the second oldest building on campus. It was completed in 1809.

The building now serves as the offices of the college of social work on campus. It is named for the attorney from Sumter County who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Later, Henry William DeSaussure helped establish South Carolina College – now USC – during his 18 years in the Legislature, a university spokeswoman told The State.

During the Civil War, the school rented many buildings to the Confederacy as a hospital to treat the wounded from both sides of the battle.

Click here for more from The State.

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.”

“The human degradation is immeasurable,” Jackson told reporters. “There should be no bail for these graveyard thieves. They deserve a special place in hell.”

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said workers at Burr Oak allegedly tampered with about 300 graves, digging them up, dumping the bodies and reselling the plots to unsuspecting members of the public.

The three men and one woman were charged Thursday with one count each of dismembering a human body. Dart said the woman was the cemetery’s office manager and was at the center of the operation.

“This was not done in a delicate way,” he told reporters. “They would excavate the grave and the entire site and then dump the remains wherever they found a place to do it in the back of the cemetery.”

He says in other cases the graves were “pounded down” and another person was buried on top. Burr Oak is the final resting place of many famous African-Americans, including lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann, as well as Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson.

Hundreds of confused and angry family members are looking for answers after the arrests. Authorities in the southern Chicago suburb of Alsip were directing crowds at Burr Oak Cemetery Thursday and taking reports from families. Among the family members is 54-year-old Ralph Gunn, whose father and nephew were buried at Burr Oak but whose bodies are missing. Gunn says their headstones are gone. And he says he can’t fathom why anyone would want to dig up bodies.  Authorities say most of the problems are from a secluded area of the cemetery that contains older plots.

Click here for more on this story from MyFOXChicago.com

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.

The African-American committee of Dade Heritage Trust planned a community meeting Monday to begin the search for descendants of the people buried at the site.

The treachery of war is horrible, and left scars untold. The years of 1861 to 1864 was not erased when I was born in 1870, and after I was old enopugh to remember, the privations told of to me, or where I could hear. I remember hearing father tell how it hurt him when he came home after the surrender of Civil War and his baby boy did not know him and was afraid of him, when he wanted to take him in his arms and embrace him.

Do not see how Yankee’s could destroy the valuable things they did when they could not use them. I heard one woman tell of how they had many negro’s on their fine old farm and had a large smoke house with lots of meat hanging up to smoke and dry to feed them. The men were all gone, also all the mules were taken except two that they left hid under a bluff near a large creek. Whenevers they heard “The Yankee’s were coming”, it was her task to hide the mules and one time the Yankee’s got there before she got back to the house. One of the Officers saw her and accused her of reporting or hiding something – spoke rudely to her and she talked back just as he did – another Officer made him hush and seeing how her bare feet and legs were scratched and bleeding, gave her a pair of his boots to wear. They had two rows of peices of meat hung, one above the other, in the smokehouse and they took it down and had the negro woman cook all they could eat and left the rest lieing around to be destroyed by anything that would do so.

This woman ( a girl then) was Miss Bashey Nichols, one of the best women I ever knew. She married Mr. Jim Brooks and is Buried in Rock Spring Cemetery.

This is 1942 another war is raging and we are asked top help. I want to help every way I can but 71 years of toil, pleasure’s and disappointment, also afflictions, makes me know I cannot do as much for defense as I would like to. I scarcely ever can leave the house because I am unable to walk most of the time and writing is my chief enjoyment.

You said you enjoy family histories in your letter received yesterday, and I thought Ide send this for you to read. We have two children, two daughters. We live with the youngest one and this is written on letters she has received. Had no thought of anyone, (or a stranger) seeing this but I will send it to you to read. Please send it back at an earlier date.

Yoiurs Truly, Mrs. Ben Stark, Star Route, Monticello, Ark.

Mountain Press is pleased to announce that we are offering a 15% discount on all Genealogy Books now through January 31, 2009.  In order to receive the discount, please just type in the coupon code JAN09 at checkout.  Be sure to type the code in the coupon code section and not the promotion code section in order for the discount to calculate correctly.  We have several new books which are listed below.  Our entire collection can be viewed at www.mountainpress.com.

Thank you, Mountain Press

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.

I drove by again this morning and the whole area looks like it has been cut.   I can’t tell if the cemetery has been disturbed or not.   It did not look good to me!

Does anyone know anything about this, or know how I could get in touch with someone regarding the family cemetery?   I have only visited the cemetery once, with a fellow researcher (cousin) from Florida.   He had said that eventually he would like to put a fence around the cemetery to protect it.   I hope it is not too late!!!!!!!!

Charles Wood, bca 1790, was my GGG grandfather.   He and several other family members are buried in the Wood Family Cemetery on Boone Rd. (near the Mt. Carmel community).

The information I have shows:
Charles Wood bought Land Lot #93 in the 4th dist., June 28, 1840 (near Chattahoochee River).   Cemetery on top of hill on this property – known as the “Old Wood Place” – shows two stones “James” and “Charlie” – indicating many graves of early Wood settlers – family of Harriet Wood Hutchins. (Negro slave graves on left of brick wall).

NOTE:   This information was provided to me by Jackie Lambert, CCGS, and I believe was originally compiled by Elsie Ragland Walden-Taylor.   The document is titled:   HUTCHENS Family History 1832-1961 – 129 Years (Formerly spelled “Hutchins”)   Data By:   Elsie Ragland Walden-Taylor.   The document outlines the Hutchens/Hutchins family history, and then contains ‘Notes on Wood History”.   Harriet Susan Wood, daughter of Charles and Mary Wood, married Archy Solomon Hutchins.

Now the question I am asking to the general public is this…. What can be done to protect my ancestors cemetery? What are the current Cemetery laws for the state of Georgia?

HELP ME!