DOJ is getting involved in a case brought against a property owner by a group claiming to have knowledge (not evidence) of a cemetery with relatives on the property.
Is this a group being denied ownership of land due to familial ties? Or is this the weaponizing of alleged history to challenge property rights? It probably depends on your political position.
I have professional experience with surveying land for burials dating back to the 1600s and after (I’ve hired companies to do this). It’s unlikely the contractor missed anything. Developers do this all the time in populated areas on repurposed land.
Too many unanswered questions. Who owned the property before the tax sale? Are they the ones bringing the suit or just an outside organization? In a lot of states you have the right to bury family members on your personal property barring county/city regulations. As far as I know that doesn’t keep you from paying property taxes and having it sold in a tax sale for lack of payment. From limited info it sounds like a money/publicity grab and yes, harrassment.
I’m familiar with a slave burial ground in a neighboring jurisdiction that is owned by the local government. They have tried to sell it to developers multiple times, but when the survey is done (like the one that the current owner had done according to the article), the cost to remove and relocate the remains is too high to justify the work, so companies decline to offer to buy it. It’s sitting in a very high-priced area unrestored and unmaintained. It’s not an unusual situation in big cities especially.
Lots of unanswered questions, though I think hate crime is a bit dramatic. I’ve been on the periphery of projects where we have had to relocate graves. One was unexpected, probably former slave graves. Someone during construction noticed the multiple divets in the ground. No stones. No records. The other was a very old family cemetery. We have tons of them around these parts. In both cases protocol was followed. The historical society was not happy in the second case, but the remains were relocated to a different part of the property with a new access road, and signage - neither of which had been there before.
I’m also interested in that the cemetery showed up on a map and then dropped? I wonder what happened there? I’ve seen several cases where important items were shifted and/or dropped over time, most likely due to an oversight/error on the surveyor/drafter. In all cases it created a huge headache for my office!
And I would be curious about the timeline of the ground penetrating radar. (We recently began such a project on one of our public owned cemeteries that was for formerly enslaved and free African Americans.) Was it really performed after 3-4 feet of ground was disturbed?
I also am finding it interesting, because I’m researching H’s ancestors in the same state. I found an 1773 ad where one relative was selling 3 parcels of land. The first two were purchased by George Washington. I am thinking that his relative may be buried on the 3rd. I’d love to find out just where it is (and just found a map this afternoon referencing a spot on his property), but in no way would I try to lay claim to the property.
It’s entirely possible that a cemetery existed on this piece of land and was noted on earlier maps but then vanished from more recent ones – especially if it was a cemetery for enslaved people or other marginalized people. For an especially spectacular example of this geographic erasure of cemeteries, look up the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan, which was re-discovered during construction work in 1991. It includes the remains of more than 15,000 people and was a major site of social and spiritual gathering for enslaved people and free Blacks in 18th-century NY. It’s on maps from that time, it’s mentioned in written records, and yet it disappeared from later maps (the city closed the cemetery in 1795) and by the late 20th century, it had been erased from historical memory. If it can happen with such a large and historically important site, you can bet that it’s happened with dozens (or more) small ones.
I’ve done some research on old family burial grounds in Missouri. They are protected from development by state law and if they are on private property, descendants can access them with notice to the property owners.
So his argument is that there was a cemetery there, the brewery removed the top 4’ and now there is no evidence of any burial on that section of the property (doesn’t sound like the entire partial purchased at tax sale was the cemetery).
So now what? If it ever was a cemetery, it no longer is as the remains, if any, have been removed (improperly or not). Do we NEVER develop that area because there are no remains to be moved? Even public cemeteries are sometimes moved to make way for a highway or development. Families who were visiting graves there must go somewhere else. Even if they viewed the land as sacred and even if any remains had long ago been returned to dust. Development happens.
My cousins built their business by moving cemeteries after WWII. They’d been CBs in the war and learned general earth moving methods and then after the war there were a lot of highways being paved, and a lot of cemeteries in the way.
We have quite the pet cemetery going here. I don’t think we get to live tax free.