John Berrien Rushing was a mechanic and a farmer. In December 2003, he and his wife were moved from their burial place on their farm home to Union Baptist Church Cemetery. Georgia Southern University anthropologists made this possible.
Dec. 19, 2003 #03-806
Georgia Southern team helps family move ancestors to new resting place
The clanging of shovels and the scraping of trowels fill the air in a Bulloch County cotton field. There is digging going on, but it has nothing to do with next season’s crop. A team of anthropologists from Georgia Southern University is excavating the graves of a 19th century farmer and his family.
For more than 100 years, the remains of John B. Rushing, his first wife, Faith Ellen Burnside, and an infant grandchild lay resting beneath the field where they grew their crops. Three generations of descendents knew the graves were there and maintained the site.
Recently, the great-grandchildren decided it is time to move their ancestors to a more secure spot.
“We had some family members who wanted these graves relocated because over time this land could be developed or fall into the hands of someone not descendents of these people,” said Robert Rushing, a great grandson and a farmer who continues to grow cotton and tobacco nearby. “They might not think twice about knocking over the tombstones, hauling them off or just forgetting there are graves here.”
The family first had the three tombstones moved about a mile down the road to the cemetery at the Union Baptist Church. The next step was to find someone to move the actual remains. Rushing said he had called the Georgia Southern biology department with an unrelated question in the past and he was so happy with their response, he thought he would try it again.
“So I called the geology department at Georgia Southern and this nice young lady looked up the number for Matt Williamson for me,” Rushing said. “I called him and he said, ‘You just happened to call the exact right person and we’ll be happy to come do it for you.’”
Williamson is a forensic anthropologist in Georgia Southern’s College of Health and Human Sciences. His specialty is old bones, whether they come from crime scenes, early Native Americans or a century-old graveyard. He has helped law enforcement authorities with a number of crime scene cases and was called to assist in the Tri-State Crematory cleanup in Noble, Ga., in 2002.
“Mr. Rushing wanted to know if it was possible to search for the actual human remains,” Williamson said. “I told him, ‘Absolutely!’ I’ve done it many times before.
“But I didn’t make any guarantees. Soil conditions dictate whether the bones will actually be preserved and complete.” Williamson went to work with his team of volunteers, including two graduate students, his department chairman and an interested high school student. On the first day they removed most of the cover soil that had accumulated over the years.
“We found the grave outlines fairly quickly, which was a good sign,” Williamson said.
On the second day, they began excavating the actual graves themselves. An initial excavation of one of the graves proved disappointing. Nothing was to be found except a change in the color of the soil, from a mottled orange to a uniform layer of chocolate brown.
“So that indicated to me that this was coffin wood, where either the lid or the bottom of the bottom of the coffin lay,” said Williamson. “When I dug a little deeper, I came across undisturbed soil, which means at least that portion of the grave had decayed.”
A complete excavation of that grave, as well as the infant’s, revealed more of the same. The team found no remains or artifacts from the coffins or clothing.
“I wasn’t really that surprised,” said Williamson. “Often that happens when the soil is very acidic.”
John B. Rushing’s grave was the last to be excavated and there the team members had more luck. While the coffin had completely decayed, they found broken glass, a metal latch, four coffin handles and pieces of fabric from the jacket in which Rushing was interred. Williamson believes the glass indicates Rushing’s coffin had a glass window.
“We also found skull fragments and the remains of some leg bones,” Williamson said. “But the leg bones were what we call phantom bones. “They are easy to see when they are in the ground, but when you touch them or try to move them, they just crumble.”
Williamson and his team carefully removed all the artifacts, including the powered remains of the phantom bones, and carried them to Williamson’s lab at Georgia Southern. They will be stored there until the Rushing family organizes a second burial ceremony at the Union Baptist Church.
Williamson considers the project a success.
“This was a win-win situation for all of us,” he said. “We gained a lot of information to add to our database of knowledge about burials in this part of Georgia for that time period.
“Hopefully this will lead to more things like this, because to me this is also a research opportunity. The time period to which these burials date, we know very little about the health of these people and the kind of lives they lead.” For the family, they now have their answers about their ancestors’ final resting place.
“We really appreciate Matt’s team coming out. We couldn’t have afforded to do it otherwise,” Rushing said. “We’re just excited that they would come do this for us.”
