Grave Concerns

Clark Smith survived four years in the country's bloodiest conflict, the Civil War, only to be killed two years later when his horse-drawn wagon was struck by a train. Some people at the time claimed that his horse had been spooked by the train and bolted in front of the locomotive. Smith's gravesite eventually disappeared from the public record, but there had always been rumors that this Civil War veteran was buried somewhere on a piece of property in rural Aurora, Ill.

This summer, the University of Illinois Public Service Archaeology Program found what may very well be Smith's grave. What's more, they were shocked to discover an entire graveyard with 20 burial sites on this North Aurora land.

With its staff of 30, the U. of I.'s Public Service Archaeology Program has been providing services and conducting research throughout the Midwest for the past 15 years. It helps state and local agencies, as well as private organizations and individuals, comply with the laws governing cultural resources, whether it's a gravesite, an excavated ancient village, or a building with historically important architectural features.

In the case of the Civil War veteran, a landowner hired the Public Service Archaeology Program because he intended to develop the Aurora land for industrial uses. Before development could begin, the landowner needed to determine whether the Civil War grave was really on the land or whether it was just a local legend.

Because records showed that the Civil War veteran may have been buried in a metal coffin, the U. of I. group set out in early 2006 with a magnetometer, says Kevin McGowan, director of the Public Service Archaeology Program. Using this device, he says they found three possible metal objects buried underground-one of them a fairly good size. So the excavation began in late summer; and within a day, they not only discovered the cast-iron coffin, but they quickly realized there was a series of graves laid out in the well-defined rows of a cemetery.

As the team worked outwards in a concentric circle from the cast-iron coffin, they came upon 19 other burial sites, McGowan says. However, it will not be known with certainty whether the cast-iron coffin actually contains the remains of Smith until the coffin is opened and the body examined.

A medical examiner must be involved because the body in the cast-iron coffin may still be partially intact. According to McGowan, these heavy caskets were marketed in the late 1800s with the feature of preserving the deceased's body. In addition, this style of coffin had a viewing window on top, although a cast-iron plate conceals the window on this particular casket.

The other 19 coffins were wooden, so the only remains were skeletal. Those skeletons have been sent to the U. of I. campus in Urbana, where researchers are attempting to identify the people by digging through public records, examining skeletal features, and tracking down possible descendants.

This isn't the first time that the Public Service Archaeology Program, which is based in the U. of I.'s Department of Anthropology, has gained notoriety over a dig. McGowan says that when the town of Valmeyer, Ill., was decimated in the 1993 Mississippi River flood, authorities decided to move the entire town to higher ground on top of a bluff. But before the move could be made, the U. of I. program was brought in to assess the land for cultural resources.

The result: They uncovered two large Native American villages, one dating back to 5,000 B.C., on the town's new site. The town of Valmeyer was still relocated to the new site, but not until the U. of I. group had uncovered the artifacts and sent them to the Illinois State Museum.

In the meantime, the search goes on for the identities of the 20 deceased who were buried in Aurora's long-forgotten cemetery. McGowan says they're checking census records from the 1800s and narrowing down the list of possible names. But some of the 20 deceased may never be identified.

As he puts it, "It's a needle-in-a-haystack approach."