Snyder, Emily, Treciak, Sebastien,
Carl Peterson, and Laura Sherrod,
2014, Geophysical Investigations of Local Cemeteries in Eastern
Pennsylvania: 27th Annual Symposium on the Application of
Geophysics to Engineering and Environmental Problems (SAGEEP),
Boston, MA, (March 17-19).
There are
many small family cemeteries with burials from as early as the
1700s located throughout Eastern Pennsylvania. The land in this
region was predominately used for farming, with mills and
furnaces also serving as popular sources of income. Several of these local
cemeteries have fallen into a state of disrepair over the
centuries. Record-keeping
is not always precise and headstones may become lost or
misplaced over the course of time.
The Zimmermans are well known as important public figures
in the Kutztown, Pennsylvania area. Local historians have
reason to believe that the patriarch Sebastien Zimmerman and his
wife Elizabeth were buried at a small cemetery known as the
Geehr cemetery. This
cemetery contains only three grave markers enclosed by a wooden
fence 3.3 m by 3.9 m. However,
none of the headstones are labeled with Sebastien’s or
Elizabeth’s names. Geophysical
surveys were performed in the area surrounding the cemetery to
determine if the extent of burials exceeds the confines of the
fenced area. A GSSI
SIR 3000 GPR unit with 400MHz antenna, Geometrics G-858
magnetometer in gradiometer mode, and Geophex Gem2 were used for
the surveys. The
Siegfried cemetery, located 1.5 kilometers southeast of the
Geehr Cemetery, is much larger and enclosed by a rock wall 27.5
m by 30.5 m. Local
residents assert that the Siegfried’s allowed less fortunate
neighbors who did not have the means to bury their family member
properly to bury their dead in the surrounding fields during the
depression. The
interior of this cemetery was surveyed with the GPR and
magnetometer and additional surveying was completed in the area
adjacent to the cemetery walls. The
geophysical surveys show several anomalies indicative of
unmarked burials inside the cemetery walls at the Siegfried
cemetery and outside the cemetery walls at both the Siegfried
and Geehr cemeteries .