Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407170050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But in rural areas such as Bedford or Franklin counties where small family cemeteries abound, other developers and homeowners have not been so careful about protecting graveyards.
Since 1990, the volunteer Bedford Genealogical Society has been cataloging cemeteries in the county. So far, it has found 1,422. Of that number, about 100 have been destroyed by land development.
"I think it is deplorable for a family cemetery to be demolished," said Del. Joyce Crouch, R-Lynchburg.
Crouch was consulted by Bob and Annie Poindexter of Lynchburg about their battle for access to a family cemetery in a Bedford County subdivision. The delegate advised them to seek aid in the courts because of the complex issues involved.
Those issues can also be tricky in court. Last month, a Franklin County Circuit Court judge ruled that members of the Powell family, who were sued by Willard Construction Co. in a dispute over ownership of a family cemetery in the Water's Edge subdivision, did not own the cemetery but had a legal right to visit it. The family had a 1918 deed of ownership to the land that said the heirs of those buried in the cemetery would own the cemetery forever.
The judge declared the deed "null and void."
Thomas Jennings, a past president of the Bedford Genealogical Society, said the issue of access to destroyed cemeteries "is a gray area. Nobody really knows the law."
And the laws preventing cemeteries from being destroyed are even worse, he said.
For one thing, it's difficult to catch offenders in the act. "You've got to prove they did it," he said. "Therefore, it's very rare that anybody is punished for defacing or destroying a cemetery."
Jennings said he thinks county officials "looked the other way in a lot of cases. Several tombstones were laid flat and grassed over so nobody would know a cemetery was there." Other tombstones, he said, were thrown into the woods or dumped into Bedford County lakes.
"I wouldn't say it was common or uncommon, but it was done."
Many cemeteries were destroyed, Jennings said, "because they were in the way of farmers. They didn't want to keep plowing around" tombstones.
In some cases, mentions of cemeteries were removed from property deeds so homes could be sold.
Another problem is not knowing a cemetery exists. Many poor families' cemeteries were marked only with plain, flat rocks instead of carved tombstones.
Charles Linard Ayers, a Botetourt county native, is a professor on extended sabbatical from the Roman Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He started the Bedford Genealogical Society's cemetery study three years ago.
A member of the American Association for Cemetery Studies, Ayers sports a bumper sticker on his car that reads, "I brake for old graveyards."
He has investigated areas in Bedford County where he said homeowners have used tombstones for doorstops or sidewalk stones.
"Only the highway department and Apco abide by the rules" of removing graves, he said. "Everybody else makes up the rules as they go along, whatever rule is convenient to them."
Ayers said those who remove tombstones from graves "have no respect for the dead or for tradition."
He said arguments lawyers may give about abandoned cemeteries are void because cemeteries can be abandoned only if the family of the deceased relinquishes its rights.
"Cemeteries do not evaporate. They cannot be sold," Ayers said. Cemeteries "can be given away, but they cannot be sold. They are reserved [for the access of descendants] in the original deed to the day of eternity."
He said if families do not have the money to go to court over rights to a family cemetery but have a deed that gives them access, they should claim their rights and let the property owners bring the legal process against them.
"You've got the deed; let them prove the ownership."
by CNB