Digging up ancestors?
-->
Sign up for our North Carolina Genealogy newsletter:
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this, but I just read over at Randomgenealogy.com that two caskets from Kinston, NC have been exhumed and sent to the Smithsonian for study. They apparently date from between 1848-1863. Apparently they’re trying to determine who is buried in them. The family histories are detailed for the individuals, but there were questions as to where someone was buried.
Like I said, I don’t know quite how I feel about that. I have a great-great grandmother that has two identical cemetery markers in the same cemetery, 20 feet apart. Same dates for birth and death, same name, everything. I suspect that after the funeral there were competing recollections of where she was interred. I’m content to leave that ambiguity as one of those funny little quirks of the past, or one of those things that says something about human nature. Maybe it’s just me, but literally digging up such “recent” ancestors is not something that I’m comfortable with. That much said, it’s being covered by the History channel and I may tune in out of interest when they do find out who is who.