[21twelve]

Lots of these old cemeteries have really poor records. Often it will be a family plot of say 16’ x 16’ but only two people buried there. After a period of time (20 years??) of no activity the cemetery can sell the remaining burial sites in that plot. But the actual location of the two people buried in that plot might just be a guess.

My sister worked at a cemetery and the digger was always coming across old bones. My sister said “the ground shifts a lot”. She was probably told that and believes it. No - they just have poor records.

[Deaf Smith]

>>have really poor records

Change ownership one or two times, remove monuments and lose records to be able to resell a plot years down the road.

May be difficult to remove all the library books that document cemeteries though.

[fini]

If the soil is sandy, it does shift a lot, which could be the case in Florida. There was an incident about forty years ago where a retired/almost forgotten cemetery needed to be relocated due to development, and the developer had to basically remove all of the soil to find the coffins due to the shifting due to sandy soil. Some of the coffins were bunched together and all had moved. The cemetery was very near the ocean.

[AnAmericanMother]

It's a problem. Doing genealogical research, you quickly find out which cemeteries had a good record system and which did not.

It's complicated by the fact that many less well-off families couldn't afford a monument or grave marker. It might be a bit confusing on Judgment Day.

[Hiddigeigei]

"Lots of these old cemeteries have really poor records."
I grew up across the road from a Catholic church established in 1774 on land owned by the mother of the first American archbishop, John Carroll. Playing in the graveyard as a child, a grave digger showed me a silver coffin handle he found while digging a new grave. He said there wasn’t anything else, just the coffin handle.