soooo.... found a head stone in my back yard...

In reply to CGLockRacer:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/homeowner-charged-35-000-by-archeologists-1.872910

CGLockRacer wrote: http://gizmodo.com/rare-indian-burial-ground-quietly-destroyed-for-million-1567902076

Wait a few years until they start burying their pets...

then sooner or later... little Gage wanders in front of a truck, one thing leads to another... and next thing you know he is sawing thru your Achilles with a scalpel.

It makes you wonder if the companies who make gravestones have a reject pile out in back, full of stones with misspelled names.

they had a good story in my home town about a headstone being found (http://www.dailyprogress.com/starexponent/news/local_news/story-of-discovered-grave-marker-takes-new-turn/article_723b7f6e-b0d8-11e3-8383-001a4bcf6878.html). Basically some guy actually bought it at an antique store, kept it for a while, and when he moved didn't have room for it, so left it out in a field near his house (in central va). Some guy comes along and finds it and they start looking for stuff and find out it matches a headstone down in north carolina.

My Mom's property in Garden Valley, CA had a grave marker on it. They researched it and found out he was some gold panner with an interesting history. Shot maybe? Anyway, turns out it was a historical thing. It's cool to see and out on the fence line.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

When you pay to give your pet a "country burial" at the vet, where do you think they go? I know where a LOT of them went, because I put them there. Being a Vet's kid was interesting, and lucrative.

If anyone needs a real body bag I have one and don't need it anymore. PM for details.

Woody wrote: I have a long story about digging a grave that I'll have to share with you guys someday.

That's the best walk-off line in some time.

In reply to Enyar:

There should be a story behind that. I don't think I want to hear it though, just incase I might have to testify against you.

Be glad it didn't say Frank N. Stein.

Curmudgeon wrote: Be glad it didn't say Frank N. Stein.

Or Abby someone...

FWIW, 811 - Call Before you Dig - doesn't cover graves or body dumps. Just thought you might want to know.

Oh yeah is this also the point in the conversation that I have a dog that is trained to locate unmarked graves and that was what I did my senior thesis on because it was well easy for me?

Keith Tanner wrote:

Woody wrote: I have a long story about digging a grave that I'll have to share with you guys someday.

That's the best walk-off line in some time.

Okay, here goes...

About six months before my mother passed away (unexpectedly), she and I were driving past a little country cemetery and she mentioned that when the time came, she would like to be buried there. It's a nice little spot on a hill, and it's unaffiliated with any particular church. There are some old stones there dating back to the mid 1800's and some newer plots mixed in.

After she died, my dad and I met with the old guy who maintains the place. He pulled out a few old tattered maps and we picked out a plot. It was January and the ground was frozen solid. Since I have siblings who live out of state and since she had been cremated anyway, we decided to hold off in the internment for a few months.

My dad had a beautiful headstone made and set into place. We had a hard time scheduling a weekend that would work for everyone, but finally picked a date. A few days before, I contacted the caretaker of the cemetery and told him that we would be holding a little ceremony and would need the site prepared. He just shook his head and said that it wouldn't work because his son was getting married out of state on the same day. They were the only two who could do the excavation. When I asked if there was any other option he said, "Well, you could always dig it yourself..."

In true GRM fashion, and without going into a lot of detail, I told my family that I would take care of it.

Now, as (bad) luck would have it, my wife's cousin died a day or two later. The timing wasn't great for anyone (especially him), as both burials were scheduled for the same day; his in the morning and my mother's in the afternoon.

On the big day, I attended the cousin's funeral, grabbed a little lunch at the buffet afterward, went home, changed out of my suit, grabbed a shovel and threw it into the back of my truck. I went to my mother's cemetery, found the plot and started digging.

I didn't really have to go too deep since we were only burying a small box containing an urn full of ashes. I was relieved to find that there weren't a lot of rocks and the digging was fairly easy. The reason for this became fairly clear as soon as I heard the hollow thud and saw the splintered wood under the shovel...

So, to recap, after leaving one funeral, I went to another cemetery to dig my own mother's grave and dug up a preexisting, unmarked grave of undetermined age. The fact that I hit wood and not concrete will give you an idea of how long it had been there. I filled in the hole and started making phone calls. We cancelled the festivities, found another plot, had the stone moved and rescheduled for the following month.

This time, I let the pros do the digging.

In reply to Woody:

It's stories like this that make me love this place.

In reply to Woody:

"...and that is the story of how I found this antique watch" would be a swell parting line.

Dig deeper.

So I must just have bad memory because after I got home and looked at it I realized it is Huston... therefore matching the name of the guy who died here in columbus. But atleast I know he is buried at the cemetery in town and not in my yard. Maybe they accidently made a duplicate? Or the previous owners of my house really needed a stone that exact size and borrowed it from the cemetery?

You sure it wasn't Claude Musselman?

In reply to edizzle89:

My guess would be that when his wife died, she was probably buried beside him and a new marker was placed with both of their names on it.

My last house in Clarksville, TN was on a dead-end street. Didn't really understand why but wasn't complaining as it made the neighborhood safer for the kids to play. That is until my kids came home and told me they found a grave in the field past the dead-end. I checked it out and sure enough, a grave with headstone. Don't remember the exact year on the headstone but it was late 1800's, I think around 1880-something. The name on the headstone was a common name for the area. There are sections of the town called the same family name along with streets and shopping centers. Takes permission from a direct descendent to move a grave but obviously never tried. There are also small graveyards between the road and shopping center parking lots in that town. The town I live in now has one or two like that also.

A very cool friend of mine is a preservation librarian. She recently sent me an article entitled Epigraphic Squeezes: Modern Impressions of Ancient History. This new found headstone would be the perfect subject on which to try this out.

http://www.archival.com/newsletters/apnewsvol18no4.pdf

ScreaminE wrote: You sure it wasn't Claude Musselman?

He was under the garden

old woman: "Do you dig graves?"

Neil: "Yeah, they're all right"

One of the big churches in downtown Columbia is built partially over a graveyard. It's a crawl space, so if you go under the church there's headstones.