Finding graves?

[Kevin75931]

I have permission from the land owner to look for a forgotten church and adjoining graveyard. The piece of land is about 1 acre in size.

These date back to the early 1900s and were part of a logging town. The mill burned down in 1925 and shortly after the community dissolved. The church was either moved or fell down.

My great great aunt died when she was 6 years old and is buried in the graveyard. However, the crude grave markers used at the time have been covered up or moved. I suspect she passed away sometime around 1912. As far as I know there is no birth or death certificate for her.

I currently have a tesoro compadre.

What do I need to buy in order to penetrate the ground? Surely there are nails from the coffins, buttons.. something in the ground?

I do not want to dig up the graves. I just want to find them and talk to the land owner about putting up some kind of fence or markers.

The place is overgrown. In the spring I plan on bringing in a tractor and brushhog to clear the area out.

 

[Loco-Digger]

I suspect that you'd need a ground penetrating Radar, I just don't think the Compadre is going to get deep enough for caskets.
If you can find where the church was using the metal detector. Listen for a nail patch in order to find where the building stood. Is there a local historic society in your area? They may have old photographs of a wedding performed at the church or other info.

 

[Kevin75931]

Is there a local historic society in your area? They may have old photographs of a wedding performed at the church or other info.

There is an older lady who lives about a quarter mile from where the church used to be. She is 90 years old and was a child when the church was still standing. She remembers the church and graveyard.

I spoke to her about a month ago and she was able to give me a basic description of the location. I need to go back and talk to her again.

Are there groups on this forum who have ground penetrating radar?

 

[boogeyman]

I agree on the GPR even then it'll be a rough search. Try this site www.apcrp.org Met Neal a bunch of years ago, nice guy and has tons of skills and knowledge. Read through their site and you should be able to pick up a ton of help and a technique you might not thought of. I really don't want to mention Neals technique due to all the people blasting anything to do with it.

You might think about a lot of internments were carried out without caskets and most of the wood caskets had less than a handful of nails unless they were fairly well off. Go study the APCRP site, and you'll see you're under equipped for this search.
Good luck to you which ever way your search goes!

 

[kcm]

There is an older lady who lives about a quarter mile from where the church used to be. She is 90 years old and was a child when the church was still standing. She remembers the church and graveyard.

I spoke to her about a month ago and she was able to give me a basic description of the location. I need to go back and talk to her again.

Are there groups on this forum who have ground penetrating radar?

Normally for something like that, we would have to turn to an expert.






I think the 90-year-old woman would be your best bet for getting a good idea of exactly where the church was, its orientation (which way it was facing), and where the grave yard was in relation to the building. Try to zoom in on the area using Google Earth and print out a bird's eye pic of the area. This may help her in describing where things were.

 

[diggingthe1]

Our town spent the money to have GPR find old graves around the cemetery. They were very successful, and found many, even on the outskirts. It sounds expensive, but it worked great. I would think the graves would be out of range for detectors. You might talk to the local City and see if they would fund the project.

 

[boogeyman]

Our town spent the money to have GPR find old graves around the cemetery. They were very successful, and found many, even on the outskirts. It sounds expensive, but it worked great. I would think the graves would be out of range for detectors. You might talk to the local City and see if they would fund the project.

I'd like to know how you got the city to flip for it! Around here we can't get em to flip for fixing pot holes and sidewalks that are heaving up! We got a disabled gentleman in his electric chair to help. We talked to the city rep. and he gave us the ole "It's scheduled we just need to find the funds" spiel. The guy in the chair explained he'd go over trying to make it down the sidewalk so he had to go out in traffic. The city official started the excuses again. The gent in the chair gave him the shhhhhh sign and said one sentence, "Let the lawsuits begin". Amazing! drove past the stretch of sidewalk a day later and not only were they able to find the funds, they got the work done in a day! I think that was a record for any city project.

 

[gordonquixote]

Mowing the area would be much, much cheaper than GPR. The Graves will be obvious depressions in the ground.

 

[diggingthe1]

I'd like to know how you got the city to flip for it! Around here we can't get em to flip for fixing pot holes and sidewalks that are heaving up! We got a disabled gentleman in his electric chair to help. We talked to the city rep. and he gave us the ole "It's scheduled we just need to find the funds" spiel. The guy in the chair explained he'd go over trying to make it down the sidewalk so he had to go out in traffic. The city official started the excuses again. The gent in the chair gave him the shhhhhh sign and said one sentence, "Let the lawsuits begin". Amazing! drove past the stretch of sidewalk a day later and not only were they able to find the funds, they got the work done in a day! I think that was a record for any city project.

I'm not sure how the exact story went, but our city(small town of 500) had extra money. Part of it was used out of respect because so many headstones were wood and had deteriorated. A bonus was finding lots of graves that may have not even been marked ( lots were children's graves, or babies). Some were out of the perimeter of the fence. Now all graves have headstones. Some people go through extremes, our caretaker could have been one of those people

 

[boogeyman]

Mowing the area would be much, much cheaper than GPR. The Graves will be obvious depressions in the ground.

Maybe in your area. Not always the case out here in the west.

 

[releventchair]

An uncle used to spruce up abandon/neglected (?) cemeteries.
One recalled ..he followed long buried wire from the fence to find the perimeter.

 

[KandiKlover]

The Makro Deephunter Pro is supposed to find cavities too though the graves are probably too deep for that plus I haven't seen any for rent. I can't rember where it was but I have seen places rent out GPRs before.

 

[sandnsea49]

Having worked in a cemetery, I have used my detector to find graves. If the casket is metal you can find the outline using all metal. In our cemetery we did not bury 6 feet deep as is thought by most people. We buried at 5 feet so the metal caskets were easy to detect. If the casket was put inside a vault, many graves were visible during the summer months because the grass was always brown in the shape of the vault because the heat from the concrete vault killed the grass. If there was no concrete vault nor a metal casket but a wooden one, it was harder to tell obviously. Sometimes we would use a metal probe to feel around for the wood. The metal probe was also used for finding buried markers. Our cemetery was started in 1832 so we had a lot of buried markers and wooden caskets. Your best bet is to find the city or township burial records giving their locations. Most cemeteries have maps with gravesites and who is buried in each or which are vacant. There should also be section markers and row markers to help in finding them. Some of those section markers are metal, some are stone.

 

[bc5391]

It was brought up about using google earth. The newest version has Historical Imagery that may help.

 

[jeff of pa]

Many Grave Stones from
1870's Through at least 1920's
Have an Iron Pipe in them So the Standing Stone fits into the Base Stone.

If The Stones are still there But Pushed over & covered over the Years

You should find them No problem.

Most old Graveyards I've seen, some of the Graves have Sunken in
and their Locations should be obvious.

if they moved, the graves, odds are the coffins were in such bad condition
they probably fell apart . so you will still have the possibility of detecting nails and coffin handles, hinges etc.
many of which were silver plated. But
most of the stones & Bones would have been moved

I wouldn't Suggest digging more then 10 inches or so anyway.
Once you actually dig the grave "Ghoul" could be Used, even with Permission

If the Ground is Semi Flat, Take lots of Pictures from all angles.
Perhaps you will be able to see slight signs of Depressions due to Shadows

 

[SpencerK]

I accidentally dug up a headstone as a kid. I was attempting to dig a lawnmower out of the ground in the woods in nor cal for scrap but when I pulled it out there was a very crude headstone with only a last name and the birthday and date of death. It was a 14 year old from the late 1890's.

I doubt somebody put the mower on top of the stone on purpose. I'm sure it was left out in the woods and sunk into the soft soil.

Ironically I also found a huge amount of handmade nails. Now that I think about it they must have been from the kasket or other kaskets. Never really put 2+2 together as a 10 year old...

In that same spot I also found a bunch of period horse shoes and tools. My house was built on old farmland. I'm assuming the headstone was a private grave site.

 

[Carolina Tom]

If you cut the grass and fly a drone over the site, you might be able to pick out the building outline, or other helpful features.

 

[Magooru]

You may have better luck with something like a Garrett GTI 2500 Pro with Treasure Hound Eagle Eye. If you have a local detecting club, see if anyone has a setup like this or similar. Not sure on the depth of graves from that era, but this type of unit can get down 3 ft or so and is better suited for larger targeting. Food for thought.

 

[Tnmountains]

Most people who do old cemetery work use a probe. It is an easy tool to make and will always tell you when you are on ground that has been dug with in the last couple hundred years. The probe is a metal rod with a T handle. It has a ball or tip on a threaded end that is about an 1/8 larger than the rod. You can probe the ground until you hit a soft spot and the probe will drop right down. A burial leaves a small cavity most times and all of a sudden the probe will just fall into the probed hole. If it hits bone it will be a yellow chalky color on the tip. This is how archeologist and cemeteries locate old graves. You can build this tool yourself. Beware of all state laws about disturbing graves and or digging though. It is a simple task and the only thing that can throw you off is where old trees stood but are long gone.
We use them to locate old bottle pits or civil war hut sites. I have a very nice probe for hunting and it is modeled after what archeologist use.