Some of Hillsborough County's earliest residents are buried at Samford Cemetery. And those are the ones we know about.
On Nov. 13, members of the Florida Public Archaeology Network used ground-penetrating radar to search for unmarked graves at Samford, 10101 Cone Grove Road. The cemetery officially lists 485 people buried there.
"The GPR can show us disturbances in the soil underneath," said Zaida Darley, outreach specialist for the network. "If those disturbances have grave-like patterns, then it is possible that it could be a grave."
Darley said her team — which included eight graduate students from the University of South Florida's Department of Anthropology — largely focused their search on war veterans, some of whom were thought to be buried underneath a dirt drive that wends around the cemetery.
According to area historian Norma Frazier, the oldest known burial dates at Samford were in the 1840s, which means it is unclear which 19th century conflict yielded the cemetery's veterans.
Sue Bunting lives in Wimauma, but five generations of her family lie at Samford. She is the president of the Samford Cemetery Association and organizes cleanups at the 3.5-acre site about twice a month.
"The reason I do it is because that's where my ancestors are," Bunting said. "My family was among the first settlers in Peru."
Peru was the name given by settlers to the area south of the Alafia River where Samford is situated. As Riverview became an established town at the turn of the century, many Peru residents move there instead, signifying the end of the town.
Since Samford is one of the few artifacts remaining from the Peru era, Bunting has tried to get the cemetery designated as a historical site.
Earlier this year, she took her plea to the county Historic Resources Review Board, which in turn asked the network for its help in documenting the orphaned graves at Samford. Since March, Darley attended as many of the cleanups as possible with a small team to research and catalog the cemetery in anticipation of their recent excursion with the ground-penetrating radar.
Darley said the five-hour search began at 9:30 a.m. The team found six unmarked graves, but Darley plans to return to Samford early next year to cover the parts the cemetery they didn't reach. Members of the network will work with the association to document the newly discovered inhabitants and promote the cemetery's preservation. Bunting is grateful for the county's efforts to preserve a piece of its history.
"I know they found quite a few unmarked graves," Bunting said. "I don't know if we'll ever know how many there are."
Author: John Ceballos | Source: Tempo Bay Online [November 23, 2010]