The Disinterment and Reinterment of the James Nash Cemetery, Jackson County, Georgia

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is proposing to widen a portion of U.S. Highway 441 south of the town of Commerce in southern Jackson County. The widening will affect the James Nash Cemetery, a small family cemetery located near a house that may have once fronted White Hill School Road (Figure 1). The highway project will require the taking of all the land in and around the cemetery, and in accordance with Georgia Code Section 36-72-5 regarding development projects that affect cemeteries, the GDOT submitted an application to the local Superior Court seeking a permit to move the cemetery. In June of 1998 Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS) submitted five documents to the GDOT in support of the application. As called for in OCGA 36-72-5 these were 1) an archeological delineation of the cemetery, 2) proof of ownership of the tract on which it is situated, 3) a plat by a registered surveyor showing the boundaries of the cemetery, 4) a plan to identify and notify descendants of those buried, and 5) a plan for the moving of the graves to a new cemetery. The permit was granted by the Superior Court of Jackson County on July 11, 2000 (case number A99CV0079) in accordance with the plans submitted, with a couple of minor stipulations added by family members present at the hearing. These were to include the name of an African American buried with the family on the new marker that was to be erected and to notify the family of the date of the actual removal of the graves. The archeological delineation report prepared by SAS stated that three tombstones were present, but no other readily discernible graves. Probing detected a few other possible graves, but no clear graves. The current owner reported hearing that five or six other graves formerly were marked by field stones. Family members, principally Lois Strasbaugh, provided the names or identities of 14 individuals believed to be buried in the cemetery, along with the name of a fifteenth that might have been buried there. During the permitting process, especially during consultation with family members, this list was confirmed through consultation among various branches of the family. Thus, while archeologically only three or four graves could be confirmed, we knew there were probably about 14 graves present. Based on the recollections of several informants and the location of several large trees and lines of daffodils, SAS delineated the cemetery as a north-south oriented rectangle extending to the edge of the right-of-way of U.S. Highway 441. Upon excavation in 2002, we learned that the cemetery was slightly wider (northsouth) and was essentially a square about 50 ft on a side (Figure 2). The cemetery was about 20 ft from a small house, amid a clump of two large cedar trees and a large hardwood tree (Figures 3 and 4). The names and birth and death dates continued to be investigated and confirmed throughout the exhumation process by family members, principally Diane Jordan. At the onset of the exhumation, family members believed there were nine Nash adults, three Nash children (including one set of infant twins), one Tolbert child and one adult African-American male, for a total of 14 interments. The exhumation in fact encountered the expected ten adult graves and four children's graves. However, there was not a pair of infant graves that would account for the twins. If they were buried in one small grave, as would be expected, that would leave one extra infant grave unaccounted for.