PETERSTOWN — Radar scans at a possible site of a graveyard in Peterstown that may contain the remains of enslaved African-American were “inconclusive,” but not all data has yet been examined.
On Wednesday, a team from the Geoscience Department at Virginia Tech was on the Givens Street site with 3-D radar underground scanning equipment.
Steve Holbrook, professor of geophysics and head of the VT Geoscience Department, said this project is a first for his team.
“This is the first time we have been contacted to do a survey of a possible gravesite for enslaved people,” he said, adding it would be interesting to him to use the technology available to uncover some of that history. “It is a little bit humbling, so I was very interest in helping.”
Holbrook said the depth of the penetrating radar waves depends on many factors but at this site, on a small lot beside the street, it was reaching two meters (just over 6 feet) as the four-wheeled platform that holds the radar was carefully and slowly pushed across the ground following a particular pattern.
“They (radar waves) bounce off changes in properties down there,” he said, much like a bat uses sonar. “The depth that it can go depends on the frequency of the antennae, it also depends on the conditions of the soil.”
For example, if it’s really wet or on clay rich soil it will not penetrate as deeply.
Holbrook said the instrument does not have resolution to see a body or shapes of human remains in detail or bones.
“Our best possibility for detecting graves will be looking for rectangular shapes where the soil has been disrupted,” he said. “In a case where there are coffins that are intact, those will also make for nice reflections if they are big enough.”
But considering the age of any graves and the time in history (late 1700s to mid-1800s) any coffins used would most likely not have survived.
“What we are looking for when we gather the data and get a 3-dimensional picture of the subsurface, it’s like of you could excavate the soil 10 centimeters (almost 4 inches) at a time and take a look,” he said. “But we will do that in the computer (at the VT department). What we are really looking for is shapes. I expect if this is a burial site we will see a series of rectangular shapes that will look like you see graves.”
Holcomb said they are looking for a change in physical properties that would have been made if the soil was disturbed and refilled.
“The disruption of the soil at the gravesite might leave a lasting physical property change that the radar can detect,” he said.
Holbrook said his team has used the technology, which has been around for decades but continues to be improved, on the Virginia Tech campus to look primarily for old structures or foundations of buildings that were used for enslaved people, but this is the first time for a possible gravesite.
Two undergraduates and one graduate student are part of his team, hired to work with this summer.
Holbrook said they are leaving Friday to do field work in South Carolina and George for the rest of the summer.
“The timing worked out we were able to come out and do this,” he said.
Holbrook brought a laptop on Wednesday for an “initial peak,” which was inconclusive, so it may take a couple of days to know for sure.
He also added that if nothing is found, it does not mean graves are not there. They could be beneath the depth of penetration, he said.
If it is a burial site, it is “sacred,” he said, and the team is approaching it with a certain amount of respect.
The quest started recently when Becky Crabtree, a James Monroe High School science teacher and writer, was contacted by John Carman from Nebraska who is from Peterstown.
“He lived nearby when he was a kid growing up here,” she said. “He walked a path through this lot to school every day. As a child in the 1940s he and his father saw carloads of African-American women who came on Memorial Day to decorate the graves in this cemetery.”
Crabtree said the site was part of a farm, the Royal Farm in an area of Peterstown called the Orchard, adding that the understanding was the cemetery most likely was for enslaved people who worked on the Royal Farm.
“We have talked to several old-timers in the area who knew there was graveyard here and had been told it was a Black cemetery,” she said. “But we are probably talking about graves nearly 150 to 200 years ago.”
Carman’s brother, David, who lives in Athens, also visited the site and verified where the cemetery is and he remembered engraved homemade gravestones made of sandstone so he did not know if they could be recovered, she added.
Crabtree also talked with Steve Newberry, a WVU Hall of Fame football player who grew up in a house across the creek (Rick Creek) from the site. He stopped by to see the work Wednesday.
Newberry said he had always been told a graveyard was once on that site. He played in the creek, but never ventured into the area where a graveyard was supposed to be.
“I was afraid to go up there,” he said. “I always heard my parents say there was a cemetery on that lot.”
Crabtree, who is a member of the Peterstown Preservation Group (PPG), contacted the property owners to get permission to try to find out if it is a gravesite and then called the Geoscience Department and talked with Holbrook, who heard the story and was immediately interested.
She also contacted Pam Jackson, president of the PPG.
Jackson was also at the site Wednesday and said one of the missions of the group is to preserve the town’s history, which is rich.
The county was founded in 1799 and the town was founded by Revolutionary War veteran, Sgt. Christian Peters, in 1803, she said.
The county was full of farming communities and slaveowners were all around the county, she said, but it is difficult to determine how many and “it was not a large number and certainly not all African-Americans were slaves.”
Preserving the cemetery, if it is shown to be that, is important. The site itself has never been built on, she said, but may have had a mobile home on it at one time many years ago.
“We would like to know if there is a cemetery here,” she said, adding she appreciated the team from Virginia Tech coming to Peterstown.
Jackson said if anything is found the next steps will need to be discussed with the property owners.
If there are graves here we want to be respectful and acknowledge them and take another step,” she said. “What that is we don’t know yet.”
“We saw some of the data at the site,” said Crabtree, who also praised the work done by the VT team. “It is inconclusive pending the processing of all the data.”
Besides Holbrook, the VT team included Winnie Avent II, Ben Eppinger and Alexa Dodson.
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