TERRE HAUTE —
During its decades of operation, dozens of human lives — as interesting, inspiring and complex as any — came to an end at the former Vigo County Home, also known as the “poor farm.”
For many years, some of the people who died at the home were also buried on the property, which is north of Maple Avenue near Terre Haute North Vigo High School.
Over the summer, those burials were the focus of intense work as a team of archaeology students from Indiana State University labored to carefully locate more than 100 graves.
In a presentation Wednesday for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Shawn Phillips, a forensic anthropologist at ISU, told more than 60 people what that work uncovered.
“This was a very painstaking, meticulous process,” Phillips said.
In all, 12 graves were disturbed last summer when workers were digging a trench for a waterline for the city’s Emergency Responder Training Academy on North Brown Avenue.
All of the dirt piled high next to the open trench had to be carefully screened. The screening uncovered fragments of bones, buttons, coffin nails, thumb screws, fabrics, wood fragments and even glass.
Surprisingly for a pauper graveyard, one casket had a glass viewing window that extended the length of the casket’s top, said Tiffany Grossman, an ISU graduate student who worked on the project.
Grossman used “ground penetrating radar” to locate the boundaries of the graveyard, which could include 200 graves, she said.
In all, the cemetery appears to be approximately 100 feet by 150 feet in size, Phillips said. Most of the graves are about 4 1⁄2 to 5 feet in depth, which is not unusual, he added. Because the land was farmed for many years, several inches of top soil also may have been removed since the graves were dug.
It is not surprising that work crews were unaware of the graves when they were digging the trench for the water line, Phillips said. The only historical map of the property that showed a cemetery near the former county home indicated the graves would have been farther east, he said.
Based on the style of the caskets discovered, Phillips believes the burials took place in the last decade of the 1800s or very early 1900s. In those days, six-sided caskets were still in use before giving way to the modern four-sided versions. The caskets at the site also reflect a late 1800s, Victorian interest in “the beautification of death,” which led some people to want glass viewing windows in coffins, Phillips said.
Traditionally in Christian societies, caskets are placed in the ground in an east-west orientation, Phillips noted. At the former county home site, however, the caskets – for some reason – were placed in a north-south orientation, he said.
Another unusual find at the graveyard was the burial of an adult less than 41⁄2 feet in height, Phillips said.
The Vigo County Home was apparently a “catch-all” institution for the poor, disabled, elderly and mentally ill, Phillips told the Osher group. Compared with other county home cemetery projects on which he has worked, Phillips said there is a surprising lack of documentation about the Vigo County Home. Unless a large cache of information exists somewhere, there appear to be very few records of the people buried there.
The next step is for Phillips to present his team’s findings to the city, something he expects to do over the next month or two. At that point, city officials must decide whether to continue with development of the property, which is part of the training academy, or to declare the area off limits as a cemetery.
In the meantime, the 12 graves disturbed last summer must be relocated to Highland Lawn Cemetery, Phillips said. The carefully documented remains are in safekeeping at Indiana State University until that work is ready to begin, he said.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
Local & Bistate
Related Photos
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Well-kept records: A ledger kept by the former Vigo County Home that dates back to 1898 shows the names of about 50 people buried on the property. (Tribune-Star file/Rachel Keyes)
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Tribune-Star/Rachel Keyes Grave yard: A copy of a map from the County Surveyor's office shows a graveyard east of the possible grave site found.
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Submitted by the Vigo County Library County home: A picture taken of the Vigo County County Home in the 1960's.
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Tribune-Star/Rachel Keyes Petrified pine: A piece of a pine found in the trench thought to be part of a makeshift coffin.
Discussion
ISU anthropology team presents findings from work on graves at former Vigo County Home site
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