Date: Fri 14-Feb-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

historical-society-Bellantoni

Full Text:

Strange Tales Lie Buried In Graves

(with photo, graphic)

BY KAAREN VALENTA

In 1790 some 300 good citizens of Manchester, Vermont, opened the grave of the

first wife of one of their neighbors, removed her heart and burned it at the

blacksmith's shop. They believed the dead woman was a vampire.

In November 1990 in Griswold, Conn., three 10-year old boys were playing at a

gravel-mining operation which had shut down for the weekend. As they slid down

a freshly cut bank of sand, two human skulls became dislodged from the soil

and rolled down with them.

The skulls came from graves in an unmarked Colonial cemetery which had been

disturbed by the gravel-mining operation, according to State Archaeologist

Nicholas F. Bellantoni.

Mr Bellantoni told the Newtown Historical Society at its meeting this week

that 29 graves were discovered in that long-lost cemetery, including one which

contained the skeletal remains of a suspected vampire.

"There was a belief in vampires in southern New England in the 18th and early

19th Centuries," Mr Bellantoni said. "We have 15 cases, dating between 1790

and 1890, in which graves were disturbed by persons who believed the deceased

was a vampire."

The belief in vampires grew out of the public health problems which existed at

that time, he said.

"Tuberculosis was the major killer of Americans before the Civil War. The

disease ran rampant through family compounds. There were large families,

especially on farms, and they usually did not live in what we would consider

to be very sanitary conditions," he explained.

At the time, no one knew what caused tuberculosis, how it was spread, or how

to cure it. The victims developed a sickly pallor and began wasting away,

dying of consumption before the eyes of their terrified family members.

"It was a public health issue but they didn't know it," Mr Bellantoni

explained. "They thought maybe it was spiritual - the dead feeding off the

living."

The Vampire Superstition

There are no such things as vampires, he insisted.

"But if you believe in something you will act accordingly. Archaeologists can

see this. They use artifacts and sites to reconstruct what people were

thinking - what you think is what you do."

The Griswold graveyard, containing members of the Walton family and others

whose surname began with "B," contained a grave with a casket marked "JB 55,"

probably a 55-year old male with the initials JB.

"About five to ten years after he died, someone dug into his grave and

rearranged his skeleton," Mr Bellantoni said. "We found body parts outside the

casket. His chest had been broken into, the cranium was turned to face west

rather than east in the Christian tradition, and his leg bones were crossed

across his chest."

The case appeared to be like that of the Ray family in Jewett City where, in

the late 1830s, Henry Ray died from tuberculosis. Two of his sons then died,

and, by 1854, two brothers had contracted the disease.

The family believed Henry Ray was feeding off his family, so they dug up Henry

and found his heart still had blood in it. They removed it, and burned it, Mr

Bellantoni said.

Sometimes graves were disturbed so soon after burial that the corpse was still

bloated from decomposition. This bloat was believed to be evidence the corpse

was feeding off the living, who were, in turn, wasting away.

Sometimes families took extreme measures. When tuberculosis struck the Brown

family in Exeter, R.I., the family dug up Mercy Brown, removed her heart,

burned it at the blacksmith shop, and made a potion of it. The Brown's son,

Edwin, who was dying of TB, drank the potion. He died four months later.

"We may be horrified, but actually that's an experimental attempt at what we

now know as inoculation or vaccination," Mr Bellantoni said. "The families

were desperate to try anything."

The belief in vampires had nothing to do with the now popular myth of Dracula.

The first book about the handsome, sinister Transylvanian count was not

written until the early 20th century. About the same time, the establishment

of sanitariums and advances in medical treatment changed society's

understanding of tuberculosis.

Deciphering The Past

While the talk about vampires held the audience at the Meeting House

spellbound, the thrust of Mr Bellantoni's presentation was really about how

archaeologists use their explorations to decipher the socio-economic

conditions of the past.

"The old story `dead men tell no tales' - forget it. Dead men tell a story,"

he said. "From a body we usually can determine the age, sex, nutrition,

diseases, exercise, how many births a woman had, sometimes whether they are

right-handed or left-handed, and even their occupations."

The teeth of the skeletons in the Griswold cemetery showed marks left by

nutritional stress and serious periodontal disease. Fourteen of the graves

held children under the age of 12. The families were not wealthy; their dead

were buried clothed only in a shroud held by pins. Clothing was valuable,

passed from one generation to the next and even mentioned in wills.

The lack of headstones was not significant, Mr Bellantoni said. Usually only

wealthy families used headstones. In fact, only 30 to 40 percent of the people

who died and were buried in Connecticut over the past 350 years are in graves

that have been identified, he said.

While most graves in the Griswold cemetery held wooden caskets which had

completely decomposed, leaving only dark stains in the sandy soil, one

contained a crypt made of unmortared bricks topped with fieldstone. Another

had a stone-lined crypt, both probably reflecting the development of the

undertaking industry.

Investigation of historical records showed that in 1757 Nathaniel Walton

purchased the property for the burial of his family. Because laws regulating

property transfers do not require deed research of more than 40 years, the

fact that a graveyard was located on the site was not uncovered when the land

was purchased for gravel-mining.

"The miner paid for the work that we did, however, and to move and rebury the

entire cemetery," Mr Bellantoni said. "He stopped all work at the site and

provided some of his workers to help us stabilize the area."

The Walton family, which came to Griswold in 1690, moved west to farm in the

Ohio Valley between 1820 and 1830. Investigation of the historical records has

not identified the "B" family members who were subsequently buried in the

cemetery; many families with surnames beginning with "B" lived in the area, Mr

Bellantoni said. DNA testing will be done to match up the families and create

a biological pedigree.

"The past is who we are - we are part of a continuum," the state archaeologist

said. "We need to remember that. Unfortunately we are so future-oriented today

that the past gets quickly forgotten.

"But unless you have an understanding of that continuity, how do you fit in?

If you lose the continuity, you lose a sense of who you are."

In Remembrance: Archaeology and Death, edited by Nicholas F. Bellantoni and

David A. Poirer, is being published this month by Greenwood Publishing Group.

The book is a collection of case studies of excavated historic cemeteries

including the Walton cemetery, the Custer National Cemetery and others, and

includes a resource guide to finding unmarked cemeteries. The book, $59.95, is

available at a special 20 percent discount until April 1. For more

information, call 800/225-5800.

Mr Poirer is staff archaeologist with the Connecticut Historical Commission;

Mr Bellantoni is the Connecticut state archaeologist with the Connecticut

State Museum of Natural History at the University of Connecticut.