By David Fleet
Editor
Atlas Twp. — A peek in the past just got a little clearer last week.
Two township cemeteries with burials dating nearly 200 years, with known graves of Norman Davison 1787-1840, founder of Atlas and Sally Mary Palmer 1807-1876, a direct descendant of Gov. William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony recently gave up a few secrets.
On Tuesday morning, representatives from Marquette-based Trimedia Environmental & Engineering began the process of mapping the graves at the historic Atlas and Horton cemeteries.
In September, the township board of trustees, at a cost of $21,000 approved the company for the process to determine the location of unmarked graves and establish the known headstones that have deteriorated or are damaged. Trimedia will then create a web-based interactive map of known and unknown grave sites. Both cemeteries are under the care of the township.
During Tuesday’s work using Ground Penetrating Radar many unmarked graves were found in the Atlas Cemetery, ranging from one-and-half feet to two feet below the surface. The radar produced a hyperbola on the screen, a void in the ground that indicates a grave.
“Older graves are definitely more shallow,” said Ken Kaiser, Trimedia manager. “Under some of the headstones there might not be a hit (from the radar), it depends how old they are and what they were buried in. If it’s a wood casket 120 years ago, there’s a possibility we are not going to see anything. That’s pretty rare, most of the cemeteries I’ve worked on you’d see something.”
“Who knows how full the cemetery gets,” he said. “The records for this and other older cemeteries are gone. It’s pretty common for the older locations. There’s so many iterations of people over time, records may not have been kept or lost. In the Atlas Cemetery there appears to be, many unmarked graves.”
Once the data is collected, determination of where the graves are located can be recorded. A list of all burials from 1932 can be used to identify some of the graves. The first burial in the cemetery was the daughter of Norman Davison, Sarah who died Feb. 13, 1837.
Dawn Bastin from the Goodrich/Atlas Historical Society was at the cemetery on Tuesday.
“The historical Atlas Cemetery is an important cultural, genealogy and architectural resource to our community’s history,” said Bastin. “It’s important that this community knows their history. Norman Davison founded this town. You drive on the roads that he set out for you to drive. We owe him that. He was a soldier in the War of 1812.”
“The Iron Belle Trail runs right by the Atlas Cemetery,” she said. “I can see QR codes here, and this becomes a destination. We have the oldest Ladies Library building still standing, we have a grange hall. We have so much history here in Atlas.”