Dig yields Colonial-era graves

Archaeologist Fred Cook had repeatedly said there were graves where Glynn Middle School had stood.

Archaeologist Fred Cook zeroes in on an uncovered Colonial era grave Thursday. Cook had steadfastly insisted that graves would be found on the site once the former Glynn Middle School was torn down [Credit: Terry Dickson/The Times-Union]

Brunswick City Manager Bill Weeks found them Thursday in the city’s historic district, and Cook called the graves — five so far — the city’s most significant historical find.

The graves, said to be from the Colonial era, lay on the southwestern corner of the grounds of the recently razed old school at George and Egmont streets. Weeks said he tried skimming the surface, but then employed a city front-end loader with its heavy-duty scoop.

Upon finding the graves, Weeks called in Cook, who dated the graves to the late 1700s.

“This was a Colonial cemetery from before Brunswick was laid out in 1771,” Cook said. “They came out here and picked out this place to bury people.”

The cemetery was situated then on the eastern edge of the fledgling community, Cook said. As the town grew up around it, it was covered over and eventually forgotten, or nearly so.

An 1893 newspaper article described the excavation and installation of a sewer line that lies beneath what is now Egmont Street. The story reported hundreds of bones being dug up, Cook said.

The sewer work likely cut a swath through the cemetery, Cook speculated, leaving undisturbed graves on either side of Egmont.

“This is now Brunswick’s number one history site,” Cook said. “What could be more important than a Colonial cemetery? We have nothing else, not a building or anything, that relates to that period.”

Benjamin Hart, an early Brunswick settler, reportedly is buried in the cemetery, Cook said. Hart’s wife, Nancy, was a woman of some repute during the Revolutionary War.

“Nancy Hart was a Revolutionary hero,” Cook said. “She shot two Tories with a pistol, I think.”

That happened in North Georgia where Hart County and Hartwell on the South Carolina line bear the family name. There was once a Nancy Hart Hotel in Hartwell.

Fred Cook uses the point of his trowel to point out a suspected human bone fragment at a Colonial era grave in Brunswick [Credit: Terry Dickson/The Times-Union]

The city acquired the old Glynn Middle site in a land swap with the school board. In the exchange, Brunswick got back the northern half of a Wright Square, a city park, that had been donated to the school board for the school site.

Weeks and Cook have been on the lookout for graves for months. The demolition of the sprawling 1950s building yielded nothing. But Weeks, a former professional archaeologist himself, said he expected to find something as work progressed to restore the grounds to a park.

On Thursday morning, he began his search, with a Public Works employee scraping the topsoil away with a front-end loader. Not long into the process, Weeks spotted the first sure sign of a grave. More than two centuries may have passed, but evidence that the soil had been disturbed was obvious.

A rectangular frame of light-colored soil surrounded an area of darker soil.

“The undisturbed subsoil is lighter in color,” Weeks said. “The disturbance is topsoil, which was dug out and then shoveled back into the grave.”

In a brief time, Weeks found two graves in a row oriented east to west as was the custom of European settlers, a rusted casket handle and some bone fragments. He found a third grave at the head of the first, and when Cook arrived, he came upon a fourth while casually scraping away dirt with a flathead shovel. They found the fifth later.

“My guess is we’re going to find 50 to 100 people out here,” Cook said.

Weeks said it will take further excavation to find out how many graves remain, and to determine the boundaries of the old cemetery.

“We don’t know if we’re in the middle, east, west, north or south end of the cemetery,” he said.

A fence put up to protect the Egmont Street graves apparently had the opposite effect on a pair of souvenir seekers.

A livid Mayor Bryan Thompson reported that the two were caught scrounging around the site, no doubt in search of bone shards or casket parts. They were ordered away from the site.

“The public needs to be aware that this is a grave site and is not to be rummaged through or desecrated,” Thompson said.

The intention of the city is to leave the graves intact, he said, and that includes any relics on or near the surface.

Thompson said police patrols will be increased in the area to ensure that no more trespassers climb the fence.

Cook and Weeks will leave the bulk of the archaeological work to others.

Weeks said the city will have to hire an archaeological firm to conduct the rest of the excavations and map the gravesites.

Mayor Thompson said that once the graves are mapped and plotted with GPS coordinates, they likely will be covered over with grass.

The story of the cemetery will be told on a historical marker to be placed on the site, he said.

Author: Mike Morrison | Source: The FloridaTimes-Union [September 07, 2012]