DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711051160

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW 

        STAFF WRITER  

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   61 lines

SONAR HINTS AT THOROUGHGOOD'S WATERY GRAVE

Two underwater archaeologists have identified three areas on the Lynnhaven River where 17th-century Lynnhaven Parish Church and the gravestones of Adam Thoroughgood and his wife might be buried in the silt.

Historians long have wondered about the whereabouts of the early settlers' graves that, along with Lynnhaven Parish Church, were flooded by the river 300 years ago. But no search had taken place until now.

Brett Phaneuf, an archaeologist with Marine Sonic Technology in Gloucester, and John D. Broadwater, manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary based in Newport News, scanned the bottom of the river Tuesday in a small boat armed with a sophisticated sonar device.

It took less than an hour for the two to come up with promising computer images.

``We found two to three rows of rectangular things sticking up from the bottom which could be the remains of a cemetery,'' said Phaneuf. ``And some structural debris that looks like it might be the church foundation.''

The two archaeologists volunteered their time at the request of the local chapter of the Colonial Dames of the XVII Century. The group organized the search in hopes of retrieving the gravestones, thinking they might place them at the Historic Adam Thoroughgood House nearby.

Two and a half years ago, the chapter unveiled a marker to Lynnhaven Parish Church on the shore of the river's western branch. The church was built in 1639 on a point of Thoroughgood's land. Church Point Farm and, later, the Church Point neighborhood that exists there today, took their names from the historic church site.

The sanctuary served the early settlers until 1687. The building and cemetery had tumbled into the river by the turn of the century. Swift currents that occurred when another early resident, Adam Keeling, dug the present-day Lynnhaven Inlet to the Chesapeake Bay were said to have taken the church and cemetery to the river bottom.

Later, the story goes, Stephen Decatur, a famous Navy commodore in the War of 1812, went swimming at Church Point and said he could feel the graves of Adam and his wife, Sarah, with his toes. It is said that the tombstones were still visible under the river 100 years ago.

Now they may be visible on Phaneuf's computer. Over the next few days, he will analyze the images further. Phaneuf and Broadwater plan to compare old maps with modern maps and aerial photos, and then plot the locations indicated by the computer images created Tuesday. Armed with that knowledge, they plan to dive underwater sometime during Thanksgiving week to try and identify what they saw on the computer.

No one is looking forward to the next step more than Paul Treanor of Richmond, a Thoroughgood descendent.

Treanor, who was in Virginia Beach for the search Tuesday, was quoted in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article last spring as saying his ancestors deserved a better resting place. His interest spurred the Colonial Dames on with the search, said chapter president Louise Wicker.

``This has been one of the most exciting days of my life,'' Treanor said. ILLUSTRATION: CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Sonar expert Brett Phaneuf, left, and underwater archaeologist John

Broadwater search the Lynnhaven River off Church Point for the

graves of Adam Thoroughgood and his wife, Sarah.

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