THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509160270
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS AND BILL BURKE, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
The knock came early one morning last week. At the door was a deputy sheriff with legal papers. ``My God!'' Virginia Morrison thought. ``Somebody's suing me!''
Then the 78-year-old woman read the papers. They contained a surprise: Someone had found the grave of her great-great-great-grandfather, who died in 1824, four decades before the Civil War.
More startling, the grave - a 10-foot by 10-foot burial vault - was beneath a downtown parking lot, on the site where Norfolk wants to build the $280 million MacArthur Center shopping mall.
Morrison, who lives in the Magic Hollow section of Virginia Beach, was dumbfounded.
``It gives you kind of an odd feeling,'' she said, ``particularly with people using that street or parking lot all the time, to know it's on top of a graveyard.''
The vault - in which Philemon Gatewood, his wife and six children are believed to be buried - probably won't stay there long.
Norfolk has filed legal papers seeking permission to dig up the vault and move it to a Norfolk cemetery. The Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority wants to pay the heirs a total of $7,500 for the 10- by 10-foot tract.
Morrison thinks that moving the remains would please her ancestors.
``I think they would be as happy in a cemetery-type location as they are under the parking lot,'' Morrison said. ``I think it's nice that the city is going to move them.''
Other relatives aren't so sure.
``I would rather it stay there,'' said Virginia McCrae, 68, of Camden, S.C., a great-great-great-grandniece of a buried man. ``I don't think there'll be a fight. . . but if someone else is going to protest, I'd join them.''
A court fight seems unlikely, but is possible. The grave site is unmarked and untended. Apparently it was abandoned many years ago. No one knows when it was paved over, or why.
``Yes, there probably are people buried there,'' said Andrea Bear, a spokeswoman for the redevelopment authority, ``but they haven't been worried about in 100 years.''
She referred all questions to a lawyer for the city, but that attorney, J. Randolph Stokes, did not return phone calls Thursday and Friday.
Norfolk Development Director Robert B. Smithwick, who heads the mall project, said he knows little about the grave, but does not think it will delay the shopping center. He said he wasn't surprised by the find.
``That's a part of Norfolk that's got a lot of history,'' Smithwick said. ``Any time you get into that kind of exploration, you find things.''
The city apparently found the gravesite during a title search of the mall property. It is mentioned in the 1861 will of Thomas Gatewood, who asked that all his land be sold upon his death, except ``the vault in the garden thereof, which is about ten feet square, in which my father &c are buried.''
The grave, which may contain a family of eight, was in the back yard of a home at 236 Bank St. The exact location is unclear because the entire site has been paved.
Under state law, city officials can move the vault if they show in court that the grave is not connected with a church or church property, is in a condition of neglect or disuse, and is in a location inappropriate for continued use as a burial ground.
State law requires that the remains be dug up and reburied ``with due care and decency.''
If someone contests the matter, the judge ``shall be guided by considerations of public welfare,'' the law says. In court papers, the city says that moving the vault is ``in the interests of the public welfare.''
The city has sent copies of the court petition to 30 known heirs of Philemon Gatewood, buried in the vault 171 years ago.
Those heirs are scattered in 12 states, including California, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, North and South Carolina. One is in England. Only three are in Hampton Roads, the best-known being lawyer Toy D. Savage Jr. of Willcox & Savage.
Savage said he approves the relocation. ``I'm glad to have them moved,'' he said Friday.
But the list of heirs goes far beyond the original 30, and probably numbers in the hundreds.
Much of the family's history is in a little black address book owned by Virginia Morrison. It holds page after page of beautiful, feminine handwriting, copied from a 1911 family Bible by Morrison's mother's cousin 46 years ago.
One page indicates that eight people are buried in the vault: Philemon Gatewood, his wife Dorythe and six of their children. Dorythe died in 1806, so it is possible the burial vault is at least that old.
The black book even includes the original tombstone inscription from that gravesite: ``Sacred to the memory of. . . '' followed by eight names, ages and death dates. Nobody knows what happened to the stone.
The family history includes several prominent Norfolkians of ages past.
One, William Gatewood, was vice president of Newport News Shipyard, manager of the Mariners Museum and a Newport News School Board member. He died in 1946.
Another, the Rev. Robert Gatewood, was rector of St. Paul's Church in Berkley from 1870 to 1909. Gatewood Elementary School was named for him. It operated for 71 years before closing in 1980.
Many descendants said they would be happy if their ancestors are moved to a proper cemetery.
``It won't bother me to move it,'' said one woman in South Carolina who asked to remain anonymous. ``Their souls are with God. That's all that's important.''
Others weren't so understanding.
``We'd like to sue somebody,'' said Stephen McCrae of Fort Mill, S.C., ``for covering him up with concrete.'' ILLUSTRATION: STAFF Map
RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Staff
Virginia Morrison, who lives in the Magic Hollow section of Virginia
Beach, was dumbfounded to learn that someone had found the grave of
her great-great-great-grandfather, who died in 1824, four decades
before the Civil War.
by CNB