High-tech methods uncover clues in historic cemetery
By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ALLENTOWN — On a sloping field in the oldest section of the Allentown Presbyterian Church cemetery, Eugene Hough is using ground-penetrating radar to search for clues to a 250-year-old mystery.
There are no headstones in this part of the cemetery, which dates to the late 1750s, and there are no records for this section to clarify whether anyone was ever interred here. Perhaps headstones on this slope have been lost to erosion and time, or perhaps there were never graves here at all.
Solving the mystery will help the church determine if this land can be used for future burials. If this is indeed an unmarked Colonial burial ground, Mr. Hough’s high-tech equipment will help him map out exactly where those graves are so they can be documented in the cemetery’s records.
”We assume there are people buried here,” says Liz Dey, a church member who stopped by the cemetery on a recent Saturday to watch Mr. Hough’s progress. “We don’t have the records for here the way we do for the rest of the cemetery.”
Pushing a high-tech machine that looks like a red lawnmower with an Etch-a-Sketch on the handle, Mr. Hough explains to the curious that he is looking for white “ghost lines” in the earth’s strata that will appear on the machine’s small computer screen if it passes over any unmarked graves.
”An area where there used to be a grave will have soil composition that is different from the area surrounding it,” Mr. Hough says. “I call it a ghost line. Because even though you fill the soil back into the ground (after a burial), it never quite compacts along the lines of the existing strata. It will show a ghost line.”
The machine’s radar can penetrate the ground 10 feet looking for subtle soil variations, which is the only evidence of burials that took place centuries ago since wooden coffins will have deteriorated by now. The machine can also pick up solid objects buried close to the surface, such as a sunken headstone.
”When it hits hard objects it sends out a ricochet, like little peaks,” Mr. Hough says. “If I see something like that maybe a foot and half down, that’s a good indication there may be a snapped headstone there. So a lot of times I’ll find that missing headstone that’s been covered over by grass and soils over time.”
This possibility is what clearly interests Mr. Hough most because repairing and restoring historic grave monuments is the heart of what his company, Heritage Guild Works, of Byrn Mawr, Pa., does in old cemeteries on the East Coast.
In the Allentown Presbyterian Church cemetery he has stabilized or restored a couple dozen headstones, Mrs. Dey says, though there are still many more that are in need of preservation work and funds are an issue.
The oldest headstone in the cemetery, a red sandstone marker for Ellinor English, who died in 1758 at age 35, has an inscription so clear it looks like it was carved yesterday: “Here lies the Body of Ellinor, Wife of Robert English…”
The back of the headstone, however, required Mr. Hough’s preservation expertise.
”It was scaling away,” Mrs. Dey says. “He needed to stabilize it.”
Nearby, 1-year-old Forman Cowenhoven’s headstone with its carved depiction of a winged skull remains as unnerving today as it was in 1762 when the baby died. This headstone is also made from thick red sandstone, but Mr. Hough needed to repair cracks on top to keep water from penetrating and weakening it.
Some of the 19th century marble headstones nearby are illegible – or so it seems. Mr. Hough steps away from his GPR machine to show a visitor, Dr. Alan Stoneback, of Bordentown, a method for cleaning badly weathered headstones so that the inscription “reappears.”
Using a gentle deionized water-based cleaning solution, Mr. Hough washes the organic buildup on the stone with a soft bristle brush. As sunlight hits the wet stone, Dr. Stoneback kneels close to read the words that briefly appear before the headstone starts to dry.
”It says John Sinclair,” Dr. Stoneback announces to the group watching the process. “John Sinclair, who departed this life September 22, 1801.”
Historian John Fabiano, of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society, says there was a local cabinetmaker named John Sinclair. His larger claim to fame, however, was his success in bringing the first musical instrument, a violin, inside the Presbyterian Church in an era when the only music permitted during services was unaccompanied singing. Whether this is the grave of the same John Sinclair, or perhaps his father, isn’t immediately clear.
Mr. Hough, a history buff and Revolutionary War re-enactor, says it would be fantastic if the high school located directly across the street from the cemetery could have students do research projects about the lives of the people buried here. The graveyard holds the remains of the founding fathers of Upper Freehold and Allentown, as well as Civil War veterans, congressmen and New Jersey’s 18th governor, William A. Newell, for whom the elementary school is named.
”There’s so much history here,” Mr. Hough says. “Who they were, the way they lived as well as the wars, diseases and epidemics that caused their deaths. It would be a fascinating research project for young people.”
Dr. Stoneback, a member of the Allentown High School Class of 1950 whose father was a former AHS principal, wholeheartedly agreed. If young people get involved in researching the graveyard, they are more apt to take responsibility for preserving it when they are older, he said.
Mr. Fabiano notes that many of the people memorialized here have left written histories that would make for riveting student research. For example, local Civil War soldier Alfred Voorhees, who died in 1864 at age 25 with nearly 13,000 others in the Confederate prison-of-war camp at Andersonville, S.C., kept a diary that can now be accessed over the Internet, he said.
Pvt. Voorhees was buried at Andersonville, nevertheless, there are elaborately engraved marble headstones here in the Allentown church cemetery memorializing him and his younger brother, Robert, a 20-year-old Union soldier killed in battle in Upperville, Va., in 1863.
The visitors wander among the other gravestones at the top of the hill and Mr. Hough returns to his GPR machine. As he plods up the slope, numerous “ghost lines,” appear on his computer screen and he marks each spot by sticking a small white plastic flag into the ground.
After a few hours, it’s easy to see that the flags have formed a horizontal grid that aligns nearly perfectly with the headstones at the top of the hill.
”It is probable that bodies were interred along these lines,” Mr. Hough says surveying the rows of white flags. “It’s probably best not to do any digging here based upon what the machine is telling me.”
The next step will be to use spray paint to temporarily mark the spots where the flags have been placed (because the flags are easily knocked over), plot the data, and record the results in computerized animated drawings that will be given to the church, Mr. Hough says.
The names of the people buried beneath this grassy field may be lost to time, but their final resting place has been found, he says.