| Today, all across the
world, thousands of small cemeteries on private property are in danger
of being bulldozed off, and the land used for crops, grazing, or new
development. Left unprotected, many cemeteries fall prey to
real estate developers or others who are seeking short term economic or
personal goals. These unfeeling people destroy many of these old
cemeteries, showing no respect for the dead or their families. They do
not appreciate or understand the importance of human burial sites as
visible, tangible links to the people who made our history.
The inscriptions on their monuments tell us not only their names and
dates, but often where they lived, their occupations and affiliations,
the manner of their death, personal traits that survivors held dear,
and names of relatives. These inscriptions provide us with invaluable
data regarding local, medical, and material history, cultural
geography, historical archaeology, folklore, genealogy, and much
more. Data that in many cases may be found nowhere else.
Saving
Graves is
strongly committed to the protection of human burial sites from
unauthorized and unwarranted disturbance, by man or nature.
We believe that the willful desecration or destruction of human burial
sites is unacceptable
in a civilized society. It is our objective to highlight their
importance and promote an attitude or reverence and respect, while
encouraging further preservation of these unique historical resources.
We
are not asking private land owners to do anything for the maintenance
of the cemetery, nor are we suggesting unrestricted access to their
private land. We are
only asking private property owners to allow access at 'reasonable
times' to legitimate groups to do the repairs and upkeep that is
necessary, and to allow descendants and other interested parties the
opportunity to visit the graves.
Some
of the serious problems that we are facing today in various states
include:
- Grave markers
have
been damaged, destroyed, or removed illegally. In some documented cases
illegally removed grave markers have been sold in flea markets as
landscaping items. Funerary art (gates, fences, plaques, flag holders,
etc) have been stolen by thieves looking to sell the metal as scrap or
to antique and garden dealers.
- In many places
where
laws currently exist to protect against the willful desecration or
destruction of cemeteries, these laws are rarely
enforced.
- Under several
current laws, cemeteries and graves that are determined to be
"abandoned" can be relocated without
the knowledge, approval, or involvement of descendants or interested
parties.
- A number of
places
today have no
procedures governing the accidental discovery of human remains.
- In many areas,
there
is no
official inventory or register of known burial sites. In Louisiana for
example, a railroad is being built through a church cemetery, that is
active and has been used for 90 years. When land was taken by the
Department of Defense to put in said railroad, a spokesman stated that
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had no idea the cemetery existed. It
does not appear on the public maps.
- Despite
provisions in
some laws for the voluntary (as opposed to compulsory) granting of
access, by a landowner, to burial sites located on his private
property, descendants and interested parties are
often denied access to family
burial sites.
- Covenants
recorded in
land records protecting burial sites and excluding them from the sale
of adjoining property are often overlooked
or disregarded during title
searches, resulting in burial sites being disturbed or destroyed
during development.
- Several locations
provide no
established guidelines for the scientific or historical studies of
burial sites as defined within the law nor provisions for authorizing
such studies.
OUR COVER
LETTER
Please read, copy and down load this letter. It is the
central theme of our position on the preservation of small and family
cemeteries on private land.
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