News

Southborough Historical Society

Southborough, MA

News

Mapping Our Ancestors (October, 2006) - Early in the 1840’s the cemetery in Southborough, today called the Old Burial Grounds, had become crowded and it was voted that only men and women with husbands or wives already resting there would be permitted to lie along side their spouses, otherwise no other burials would be allowed. In 1843 Southborough closed the Old Burial Ground and in 1844 opened a new burial ground called Rural Cemetery. Almost three centuries have passed since some burials took place and many storms over the years have been the cause of large trees and limbs falling, destroying many gravestones.

Russell Kempton, a geologist with New England Geophysical of Mendon, was chosen by the Historical Commission in July to search for unmarked graves in the Town's first cemetery. Kempton uses his ground penetrating radar to interpret what has happened to the soil below the surface. He has scanned only a handful of cemeteries and most of them out of state, including a 17th century burial ground of English Setter and Native Americans at Fort William in Maine.

Russell Kempton from New England Geophysical

So far, with approximately two-thirds of the cemetery having been documented, 500 unmarked graves and evidence for the existence of old structures within the burial grounds have been discovered. The discoveries are courtesy of a box-shaped device with a computer screen on two wheels. An antenna sends a pulse of high frequency radar up to 12 feet underground, which is echoed back and recorded by the machine in real time. A computer screen near the handlebars displays the results. "We're looking for an anomaly in the naturally occurring soils", said Kempton, who once worked for NASA designing remote sensing systems. 'It's an easy jump to infer you're looking at grave shafts." When a body decomposes, it increases the organic matter in the soil and leaves a rectangular trace that radar detects.

David Falconi Notes Burials as he Stands near the Radar Device

In addition to the organic matter, the radar senses changes in the soil patterns made when the graves were dug. "Soil doesn't change by itself", Kempton said. "When you dig stuff up and put stuff in the ground the soil doesn't go back to the way it originally was."

Volunteers Marking Indications of Burials

The mapping began with the help of Historical Society members at the northern end of the cemetery and systematically is moving towards the older southern end where the mapping will be more challenging. It appears that new areas were added and changes made to the cemetery boundaries as the need for space increased. A scan of the entire cemetery should be complete within a month and then members of the Society and Commission will comb through the data and draw up a report. The information will be used to update a 1970’s map by indications referencing the unmarked burials. The map was created by members of the Society to record the then three hundred and twenty remaining stones in the cemetery.