In response to recent demand for new industrial sites, the Development Authority of Bulloch County has been buying more land, and one tract comes with a surprise – a family burial plot, or at least a collection of markers, including one for a woman who died 168 years ago.
Until the DABC closes on its purchase, which it plans to do this Friday, the 83-acre tract discussed here belongs to Cynthia Akins Wycherley, a resident of Annapolis, Maryland. It was one of two parcels the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners rezoned Jan. 3 to the Light Industrial classification at the authority’s request. These and two neighboring parcels the DABC bought last year from other owners were all once part of an Akins family estate, fronting U.S. Highway 301 around 1.4 miles north of the I-16 interchange. Most of it was farmland, and some had cotton grown on it in 2022.
When surveyors went to check the Wycherley tract for the pending sale, they found first a gravestone, or slab, lying flat on the ground inscribed “in memory of” Sarah Williams, whose maiden name was Green and who died in 1855 at the age of 52. The marker is near a lonesome, dead-looking tree left standing in the middle of the field.
Returning to the site and brushing away a top layer of soil near the marker, the surveyors found two more graves, or monument slabs, Steve Rushing, attorney for the Development Authority of Bulloch County, told its board members during their Jan. 5 meeting.
“We started having conversations with the sellers about their knowledge of it, who the family was, and they had no idea that there was such a stone on their property,” he said. “They lease it out to a farmer, and the farmer knew about it. He farmed around it.”
Specified by law
Rushing noted that he had consulted County Attorney Jeff Akins and they had examined Georgia laws for developers working around or relocating an abandoned cemetery or burial ground. Providing criminal penalties, the law prohibits a property owner from disturbing any burial ground, burial objects or human remains without a permit, which in the case of a private owner would be sought from the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners.
But in the case of a public entity such as the DABC, the permit must come instead from the Superior Court, Rushing said. The DABC board last week unanimously voted to move forward with buying the land, requesting a 10-day extension, through Jan. 15. Originally, the 30 days to close on the purchase after the authority exercised its option would have expired last Friday, Jan. 6.
“What the Development Authority decided to do was to purchase the property with the knowledge of the burial ground on the site with the plan that after purchasing the property they would seek a permit from the Superior Court to be allowed to move whatever is there as an abandoned burial ground,” Rushing said Tuesday.
A section of the state law spells out specific requirements for getting a permit to relocate graves or buried remains. These include a report prepared by a qualified archeologist, stating the number of graves believed present and their locations, and a plan prepared by a genealogist for identifying and notifying any living descendants.
Under the law, the archeologist may use only “minimally invasive” techniques, which can include a traditional metal probe or high-tech means such as ground-penetrating radar.
“But that will follow the purchase of the property and has not been initiated yet,” Rushing said.
Is she buried there?
Some preliminary searches through an online genealogy site suggested that Sarah Green Williams had nine children, Rushing said. But information found online also indicated that that she was buried at the “Williams Cemetery.”
One cemetery by that name exists in southern Bulloch County, but miles to the east in the Ivanhoe area. One marker there is for “S. Williams.” This led Rushing to suggest that the “in memory of” stone could possibly have been a memorial placed after Sarah Williams was buried elsewhere. Or if she and other members of her family are buried on what will soon be the development authority’s land, the Williams Cemetery could be a destination for their reburial, he suggested.
“It is still a possibility that she is actually buried at the Williams Cemetery and these are memorials,” Rushing said. “The Ancestry.com search that listed all her nine children, that same search stated that she is buried in the Williams Cemetery in another location in the county.”
Anyway, the development authority intends to contract for archeological and genealogical experts to make a determination.
Another possibility discussed at last week’s board meeting was for the authority or an industrial buyer to cordon off the burial site and provide an access lane or easement from the highway.
But DABC Chair Billy Allen observed that delaying action could hinder the authority’s ability to offer the land to an industry.
“Shouldn’t we go ahead and rectify the problem now before it becomes a problem if an industry comes to locate there?” he said prior to the vote.
Four parcels in all
The Wycherley tract was previously zoned in part HC, or highway commercial, and in part AG-5 agricultural. It and a neighboring small parcel measuring 1.39 acres owned by Mincey Rentals and previously zoned HC were rezoned to LI, or light industrial, by the county commissioners Jan.3, and the DABC closed on its purchase of the Mincey Rentals parcel Jan. 6.
Last year, the authority purchased the two adjoining tracts totaling a little over 100 acres, which were also rezoned for industrial use.
Last week, the DABC took action to offer Ecoplastic Corporation, a parts supplier to Hyundai Motor Group, 78 acres of that previously combined tract. A sign has now been placed there announcing that part of the property as the future site of Ecoplastic’s factory, expected to ramp up over eight years to create 456 jobs.