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St. Louis County cemetery to honor the long forgotten by finding graves with radar

Daniel Richardson of GPRS uses a penetrating radar scanner at Zion Cemetery in St. Louis County on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
Sophie Proe
/
漏 2024 外网天堂
Daniel Richardson, of GPRS, uses a penetrating radar scanner at Zion Cemetery to locate unmarked graves on Wednesday in St. Louis County.

A St. Louis County cemetery is using technology to identify the locations of people buried more than a century ago.

Zion Cemetery has more than 800 unmarked graves, and its leaders want to make sure descendants of the buried can find them.

鈥淵ou get involved with cemeteries because you are interested in the past, and this is one of those times where we didn't have a lot of information, and we wanted to see if we could find some more,鈥 Zion Cemetery Association President Martha Kneib said.

On Wednesday, a team from GPRS, an organization that specializes in ground-penetrating radar to locate utilities, visited the 141-year-old cemetery to find the grave sites and mark their locations.

鈥淭he people who are buried here don't have a voice,鈥 Zion Cemetery board member Marian McCreary said. 鈥淭hey are unknown to their descendants, and I would like the information to be available.鈥

McCreary started reviewing burial records from the 1880s several years ago. She checked St. Louis and Missouri death and birth records since up to 40% of the buried are stillborn babies, infants and young children.

Zion Cemetery Association President Martha Kneib (left) stands with Mason Mayberry (right), Area manager for GPRS. Mayberry uses a penetrating radar scanner at Zion Cemetery in St. Louis County on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.
Sophie Proe
/
漏 2024 外网天堂
Mason Mayberry, area manager for GPRS, uses a penetrating radar scanner at Zion Cemetery on Wednesday. The device emits radar pulses to identify buried objects without disrupting the soil.

The bodies are located in the cemetery鈥檚 tranquility garden, an area that contains the remains of people whose families couldn't afford tombstones, McCreary said.

鈥淢ost of them don't even have obituaries because they just didn't have the money, McCreary said. 鈥淏y today's standards, very inexpensive, but yet that was still burdensome for many people. So that's why this whole section was created.鈥

This summer, cemetery leaders decided to work with GPRS. The company鈥檚 device looks like a lawnmower that emits radar pulses to identify buried objects without disrupting the soil. Operators then mark the location of the disturbances.

鈥淚t's not an X-ray machine, it鈥檚 sonar that bounces back and gives us the soil densities, the soil readings, and then we interpret those based on our findings,鈥 GPRS Area Manager Mason Mayberry said.

Cemetery leaders are considering building a memorial to the buried people.

Wednesday鈥檚 search brought out history buffs and people with ties to the cemetery like Amy Sansone, whose parents are buried in another part of the cemetery.

鈥淚t鈥檚 nice to find people they're not forgotten,鈥 Sansone said. 鈥淚t's so sad to think after a while, nobody knows where you are even anymore.鈥

Chad is a general assignment reporter at 漏 2024 外网天堂.