But before construction can start on a lot at Creek Wood in the Whitfield Road subdivision, developers had to make sure an old cemetery was cleared out.
The builders of the Creek Wood neighborhood thought the burial ground was empty because the former landowner decided to have the bones of his ancestors moved to another resting place. But they couldn't be too sure.
Developers of the Whitfield Road subdivision and the county inspectors wanted to make sure that all bodies buried on the site had been removed before building begins.
But records from Walker's Funeral Home, in charge of the reburial, weren't matching up with documents at New Hope Presbyterian Church, where the reburial took place.
Developers also checked with register of deeds documents, but they were incomplete.
So the developers contacted John Clauser, an archaeologist with the State Archaeology Department, to investigate the situation.
Clauser said that after inserting tile probes into the ground, he can identify a grave site, disturbed or undisturbed. In this case, he found that all the bodies had been removed.
"It felt fuzzy," Clauser said of the probing. "This is usually a distinct indicator that something had happened after burial."
After 30 years of work as an archaeologist and 15 years working in cemeteries, Clauser felt all the historical information and the evidence from the investigation coincided.
