The Mad Genealogist

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.

Many of them climbed aboard all-terrain vehicles for the two-mile ride through the woods and springs of Paint Rock Valley.

They had grown up hearing about Reid’s Cove, a clump of poplars and hickories at the base of a mountain.

But none of them had tried to go there until Donald Langston, a retired oil-company employee from Winchester, Tenn., used some witching sticks to solve a family mystery.

A tip from a long-time barber in the valley had been the key. The barber, Monroe Mullican, now 97, told Langston that his great-grandfather was buried near a spring in Reid’s Cove.

As a child, Mullican, then a resident of Reid’s Cove, had eaten several meals at the home built by Langston’s great-grandfather, Hiram Langston, a veteran of the Civil War.

In the yard of the home was Hiram Langston’s grave. Buried next to him was James T. Langston, Hiram’s first child.

James T. Langston was 1 when he died on April 19, 1867, six years before Hiram’s death.

“Follow the left side of the mountain and go to the back of the cove until you get to the spring,” Mullican told Donald Langston.

With witching sticks in hand, Langston followed the directions on a day in the late fall.

He found the spring at the end of the cove, just as Mullican had told him. The house was gone and there was no sign of a headstone in the thick underbrush.

Langston reached for his witching sticks, metal rods used mainly to locate water.

“The way I found out about these, I had been to a cemetery and met a man who’d been in the plumbing business,” Langston said. “He went to his car and got these sticks. He said they work on graves, too.”

The sticks worked on Langston’s first trip into Reid’s Cove. Within 10 minutes, the sticks crossed – Langston’s sign that he had found his great-grandfather’s grave.

“That’s the only thing it could be,” he said.

Because it was early November, almost deer-hunting season in Alabama, Langston decided to wait until February to dig up the graves of Hiram and James T. Langston.

His plan was to exhume their remains and bury them in Clay Cemetery in Princeton.

“I’m not going into Reid’s Cove during hunting season,” he said. “I’d rather face the snakes than the hunters. All these mountains are infested with hunters, and most have no idea about safety.”

40-year search

The search for Hiram Langston’s grave began, more or less, with a clue more than 40 years ago.

Just before his death in 1966, William Hiram Langston II, known as Uncle Bill, gave Donald Langston the location of the grave.

“My father’s buried in Reid’s Cove, in the yard of an old house,” Donald Langston recalled Uncle Bill saying,

Uncle Bill was born on Dec. 27, 1873, four months after Hiram Langston, his father, died.

His mother, Pormalla, raised Bill and two older children until she re-married in 1875.

“Donald’s had this in mind for 40 years,” said Ozell Womack, Donald Langston’s older sister. “But you know how people are, keep putting things off what need to be done.”

Around 10:30 on Tuesday, it was finally time to act. Donald Langston cranked his all-terrain vehicle and led the procession of four-wheelers into Reid’s Cove.

In front of him were two men from a funeral home in Winchester, hauling a backhoe on the trailer of the truck.

One of the men, Jim Cortner, the co-owner of the funeral home, had excavated the graves of 15 former Civil War soldiers. But none had been in unmarked graves, as Hiram Langston was.

Donald Langston realized the odds of finding the graves intact were slim. The day before, he said, “I think we’ll find soil that’s dissolved – nothing but that. No bones. Maybe a belt buckle.”

Yet, Langston was hopeful as he began the ride into Reid’s Cove.

“I can see the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Digging begins

The dig began just before 11 and lasted just more than 30 minutes.

“Let me get my (witching sticks) out,” Langston told the crowd. “They’re an important part of this.”

Then Langston instructed the people from the funeral home where to dig.

Nudging his foot against a stump, he said, “Start right there.”

Putting his foot against a rock, he said, “Goes to right there.”

The baby, he said, is below a cluster of rocks.

First, there was a prayer by Billy Carl Cagle, an accountant from Princeton.

“We’re gathered here today with Donald Langston and other relatives of the buried Civil War veteran, and we need to ask God to be with us,” he began.

It was 10:48 when the digging began.

Cagle said, “I expect it will be like a big charcoal pile, a black streak.”

But there was no black streak or anything resembling a grave.

“When you move a grave this old,” Cortner said during the dig, “it’s more of a ceremonial thing than the moving of the actual grave.”

Langston walked past edge of the dig, holding his witching sticks, trying to find some sort of sign.

“I told you we might not find anything,” he said. “I’m not shocked. We’ll put dirt in a bag and bury it. That’s what we would have done, anyway. I have no doubt this is the right area.”

There was some mild disappointment when the dig ended at 11:25. One of the relatives said she’d hoped to “find something – a button or a tooth.”

But Donald Langston considered it a success because so many people made their way into Reid’s Cove.

Cortner scooped some dirt into two body bags, and the procession headed for the burial at Clay Cemetery in Princeton.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more people here,” Langston told Cortner.

Only a smattering of relatives -10 or so – attended the burial.

“Well, there will be a bunch here Saturday,” Cortner assured him.

Yes, Langston said. As many as 500 are expected for a reburial and dedication service on Saturday, he said.

Civil War reenactments, including cannons, are scheduled. There will also be a three-gun artillery salute, a salute to Dixie and the unveiling of the marker.

As the burial ended on Tuesday, Cortner wedged Hiram Langston’s marker into the ground and looked at the top of the headstone.

“Y’all know why the Confederates got a pointed top and the Union has a rounded top?” he said. “So the Yankees can’t come by and sit on ‘em.”