A new resting place

TOWN CREEK - Lewis Fitzgerald probably thought little about being in danger as he entered a Tennessee operating room in 1937.

After all, he was only having surgery to repair a broken thumb.

No one knows what happened for sure, but Fitzgerald died there that day.

His body was returned to Lawrence County for burial in Foster Cemetery, which is now part of the Doublehead Resort property near the Tennessee River in Town Creek.

Still, 70 years later, some family members remember the odd circumstances of his death and hope the information can be used to help locate his body.

Fitzgerald's body is one of 227 that has been exhumed from Foster Cemetery and will be moved to a new site about a mile away.

"If we can identify a body with a broken thumb, then we can assume it's him," said Hunter Johnson, who is the archaeological research director for the Southeastern Anthropological Institute at Northwest-Shoals Community College.

Johnson is leading the effort to move the cemetery.

When Robbins Property Development sold the resort in 2006, part of the deal required the company to relocate the cemetery, Johnson said.

When the project began, team members thought there were about 75 graves in the cemetery, but only six headstones were visible.

After using remote sensing equipment from the University of Mississippi, more than 200 burial sites were identified.

"It turned out to be much larger than we expected," Johnson said. "We only had seven names of people buried out here when we started."

One of those seven was only discovered after digging began and researchers found a headstone that had sank into the ground.

The cemetery is believed to have originally been a slave cemetery because there were several plantations in the area in the mid- to late 1800s. The cemetery was used until about 1980.

"There were reports that some bodies were washed into the river over time and just floated away," said Tom McKnight, who has been volunteering with the project.

There have been discoveries of artifacts buried with bodies. Some have included coins or hairpieces. One child's grave had combs and a baby's rattle.

"Obviously, this child was loved because these items were placed with his body," McKnight said. "I hope we can find out who this child was."

One of the primary objectives, now that the bodies have been removed from the ground, is to try and identify them so that markers can be placed at graves in the new cemetery.

The remains are being stored at Northwest-Shoals Community College. About 75 exhumations had few skeletal remains and have already been reburied, but researchers hope to learn more about the others before they are relocated later this month.

Researchers have gotten help from local churches in the area and have conducted some surveys to find information about people buried in the cemetery.

The research has led to the discovery of about 57 names.

"The community has really helped us and I hope we can find out who more of them are," Johnson said.

Tips from family members and residents gave researchers clues as to what to look for.

In one instance, family members said they remembered Annette Johnson wore a wig all the time. When the remains of a woman buried with a wig were found, Hunter Johnson said they were able to identify the remains as those of Johnson.

One man, Lacy Minor, was buried with a hospital identification bracelet on his wrist. McKnight said he contacted the Lawrence County Archives and a local physician - both contacts helped identify Minor from his medical records.

Researchers discovered that another man, Alford Campbell, died May 23, 1953, in an industrial accident on Tennessee Valley Authority property.

Researchers also discovered the names of some slaves buried in the cemetery were slave names recorded on an 1849 Lawrence County tax assessment record.

Pvt. Earnest Foster had the only grave with a military marker. After talking with the Veterans Affairs office in Moulton, McKnight learned Foster was born in 1894 and registered with the draft board Sept. 11, 1918. He died Sept. 23, 1923.

A military marker has already been ordered to place at his new burial site.

"This has been cross-discipline collaboration in archaeology, anthropology, forensics, genealogy and history," McKnight said. "Everything has been managed with humanity and reverence and adherence to historical commission protocol."

Researchers say there was some skepticism about the project at the onset, but family members soon saw that their ancestors would be treated with respect and care and it afforded them the opportunity to learn more about their heritage.

All of the bodies and the artifacts buried with them will be placed in the new cemetery in the same family clusters and patterns as they were in the old Foster Cemetery.

McKnight hopes to obtain funding for a fence, a memorial plaque listing the family surnames, and a flagpole to honor veterans who will be in the cemetery, he said.

"If we don't do these things it would just be a mass grave and that would be a desecration," he said. "The purpose of this is to honor them and to help families bridge the gap from one generation to the next."

Jonathan Willis can be reached at 332-0140 or jonathan.willis@timesdaily.com.