Taphophilia.(dot) Com - Excavation crews discover previously unknown graveyard

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Excavation crews discover previously unknown graveyard

Written by DeadGirl
Saturday, 19 August 2006
Search for body turns up mystery Excavation crews discover previously unknown graveyard By Ted Gregory, [Chicago] Tribune staff reporter August 18, 2006 Everyone involved with the exhumation of Civil War veteran Clark Smith's grave embarked on the task with appropriate reverence. Archeologists conducting the dig found his body, as expected, in a dense oak grove between soybean fields in North Aurora. But then, they found another body, then another, then another. By Wednesday, the body count had reached 19, and a grim mystery is growing right along with it. "It's a tragedy," said Linda Eder, project committee chairman of the Kane County Genealogical Society. "It shouldn't have happened. I don't feel comfortable having people dug up." The series of events started about two years ago, when an Elburn man concerned with sprawling development alerted the genealogical society to the long-rumored location of the veteran's grave in an area near Mitchell Road south of Butterfield Road. Eder and colleague Sandra Chalupa started researching. What they found supported the speculation. Smith, a corporal who served in the Battle of Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, Miss., and numerous other engagements throughout the South, concluded his military service in 1865. Records uncovered by Eder and Chalupa showed that Smith returned to the Aurora area and farmed his father-in-law's land along what would be Mitchell and Butterfield Roads. Then, while riding a wagon to retrieve water in December 1867, Smith was struck by a train and killed. A funeral parlor receipt shows that his widow paid $55 for a casket. A local newspaper photograph from 1967 notes that two area boys had restored Smith's gravesite, but it went to seed again. About four decades later, a prospective buyer of the land brought in a crew from the University of Illinois to perform a magnetic scan to determine definitively whether Smith was buried there. The crew found three potential grave sites. A group from U. of I.'s Public Service Archaeology Program started digging July 31 and found Smith's cast iron casket, said John Thornhill, a partner in Tollview Venture Inc., which owns the land. Adhering to state protocol, they dug in a 15-foot radius around the grave. They found three more bodies and then had to dig 15 feet around those graves as well. "As we kept expanding these 15-foot concentric circles," Thornhill said, "we kept finding more remains. All these graves started popping up." That was a surprise, Thornhill and Eder said. "There's just been no word of all this burial activity over all these years," Thornhill said. The only evidence Eder could find of a graveyard on the site was in an 1871 Kane County atlas. One page shows a tiny cross west of a schoolhouse along Mitchell Road. "There are millions of questions on this now," Eder said. "I mean, we started with some, and now we're swamped." All the caskets but Smith's were made of wood, and it is difficult to determine if they were buried about the same time. Eder and Chalupa are continuing their research in hopes of discovering the graveyard's origin and the identities of those buried there. The U. of I. archeologists also will research historical records and examine the remains for identifying traits, said David Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. The agency coordinates the exhumation and management of graves through the Human Skeletal Remains Preservation Act. In addition, the archeologists must try to find surviving descendants, Blanchette said. If that fails, the remains will be stored in an Illinois State Museum facility in Springfield. Smith's remains likely will be claimed by a Civil War veterans group, Eder said. Kane County Coroner Chuck West may shed some light on the mystery at 3 p.m. Friday, when he is expected to hold a news briefing on the Smith exhumation. "I've gotten a couple of calls from people who were not yelling and screaming," Eder said, "but they were questioning the propriety of what we're doing, and I understand that. "But we didn't know about this." ---------- This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0608180202aug18,1,6442945.story ****** A short follow-up story: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0608190229aug19,1,554118.story Public's help sought in cemetery mystery** August 19, 2006 KANE COUNTY -- As a cast-iron casket believed to contain Civil War veteran Clark Smith sits in the Kane County morgue, the search goes on for his descendants and those of the other 18 bodies unearthed in a long-forgotten cemetery in North Aurora. Kane County Coroner Charles West said Friday that he hopes news accounts of the cemetery's recent discovery will lead to help from the public in identifying the bodies. Part of the roughly 10,000-square-foot excavation site is still being examined, West said. "Right now we have no idea how they got there or when they got there. It's a very unusual find." Finding next of kin is the first step in deciding the fate of the remains, he said. As for Smith's descendants, members of the Kane County Genealogical Society have traced his lineage up to 1996. They are trying to find two of his great-great-granddaughters, Nancy Kinney Adams and Donna Kinney Miles, who lived in the Chicago area as recently as a decade ago, said Linda Eder, the society's project committee chairman. Records show Smith died in 1867. Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries