Reflections: Graveyards
by Kathleen Richardson
In 2006 workers clearing land behind an upstate New York barn discovered a graveyard buried in brush so high they were unable to spot a 5-foot tall co-worker walking through it. In short order it was established that this particular cemetery had been sough by many in the previous fifty years.
A newspaper article covering the find reported: "the cemetery was used by the county for indigent residents of the county home and patients at the local tuberculosis hospital." All four hundred twelve graves were numerically marked, with deaths beginning in 1893. Six infants were reported buried in a mass grave. Of the four hundred twelve buried in this county graveyard, eight-R. Anderson, John Force, Michael Garvey, Herman Kinaper, John Lyon, Maria Nicholson, Abram Smith and Andrew Snyder-were born in 1820, the earliest born of the entire group. One of the eight lived to age seventy-two, six were in their eighties at the time of their deaths and the last expired at age ninety-five.
Commonly called consumption, tuberculosis spread swiftly, killing 100 million in the twentieth century. It was considered the disease of the urban poor in the 1800's and the first half of the 1900's. "Tubercular decay has been found in the spines of Egyptian mummies," reports the on line site Wikipedia. Despite its early appearance, Wikipedia further states: "TB was not identified as a single disease until the 1820s and was not named tuberculosis' until 1839 by J. L. Schonlein."
My paternal grandmother died in the same tuberculosis hospital where many of the occupants of the rediscovered cemetery died. Her demise came fourteen years before the 1946 discovery of streptomycin, the initial antibiotic remedy for TB. Streptomycin was first used on patients in January 1947.
There were two burials in the county graveyard in 1946. Following nine years with no burials, thirty-seven year old Henry Alvin Brooks was placed there in 1955. He was the last.
My older brother is the family genealogist. He concentrates on specific facts: names, dates and locations of births, marriages, divorces and deaths. I prefer more details. For instance, my recollection is of being told that after Grandma Hazel died, her bedding and clothes were all burned because of fear of tuberculosis contagion spreading through them. Mattresses and bedding of TB patients were burned as late as 1950.
Further commenting on the rediscovered graveyard, the County Historian said, "Like any cemetery, it is full of history and it behooves us to keep them up. If they're gone, the history is gone."
Sources:
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.paintedhills.org
The Leader, Corning NY 09/03/2006