Grave Secret of the Past Unearthed at Construction Site

It’s no secret that Merritt Properties is transforming a 35-acre plot on Route 22 into the Aberdeen Corporate Park.

But what few people know is that to get moving on the land’s future development, Merritt had to first move a piece of the property’s forgotten past: a 132-year-old family cemetery. 

“We discovered a graveyard,” said Amy DiPietro, Merritt’s project manager for the $60 million development. 

The graveyard, discovered in April, has not been publicized before now as experts continue to work to identify discovered remains, find and communicate with descendants and organize the relocation of a graveyard that appears to have belonged to the Cole family.  

Preliminary research shows one of the graves contains the remains of James Cole, a War of 1812 veteran who served during the Battle of Baltimore. Another grave is believed to belong to his widow, Elizabeth Gilbert Cole. 

Dr. Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution declared this month others buried in the family plot include “an adolescent of 11 to 12 years of age, a 5- to 6-year-old [probably a girl], an infant and an elderly woman buried prior to 1860,” said Rebecca Fifield, a Cole descendant who lives in New York.

Although the property’s previous owner had razed most of the area many years ago, a 30-foot tall hill had remained undisturbed. If the now-deceased owner knew what was there, it’s a secret he took to the grave with him.

Merritt was not aware of the cemetery until it began preparing the land for development. That’s when the company unearthed elements of what turned out to be a cemetery on the hill.

So Merritt called in a team of experts to help to research the property's past.

Merritt lawyers contacted local history expert Henry Peden Jr. to help identify the land's history. Peden then called in local historian Christopher Smithson to assist.

In a stroke of luck, Smithson happened to know Fifield, the Cole family descendant who lives in New York, and she was willing to help with the identification process. 

“I talk to her on Facebook all the time,” Smithson said.

In another ironic twist, Peden and Smithson are both distant cousins of the deceased.

The two historians discovered that the Cole family owned the property as early as 1755. County land records formally recorded ownership in 1820.

They also learned James Cole lived from July 15, 1794, to July 4, 1878, and Elizabeth lived from 1806 to 1890, according to the tombstone inscriptions that had been recorded at the Historical Society some 40 years ago.

“Merritt decided that the proper thing to do is to disinter the remains and have them moved,” Smithson said.

To do that, the developer hired Gibb Archaeological Consulting, an Annapolis company run by James Gibb.

After securing the necessary permit, Gibb headed a team that painstakingly unearthed the remains by hand, with shovels and trowels for five days last April. Nine members of the Archeological Society of the Northern Chesapeake and students from Harford Community College and Stevenson University also participated, Gibb stated in a report for the Cole family descendants and Merritt Properties.

The two main graves had been recorded in county records decades ago, but the team unearthed five more at the site that were not registered. 

Both of the Coles’ graves were intact, though the coffins had long since collapsed, Peden said.

“You could see the outline of where the body had been, and the hip bones,” Peden said.

Time and nature had taken their toll on the graves. Little more than disintegrated wood was left of the coffins. One gravesite was believed to have belonged to an infant, given the size of the coffin, Peden said.

Among the findings was a coffin with a shattered glass window that would have been used for viewing the deceased. That coffin is believed to have belonged to Elizabeth, according to Gibb's report.  One personal artifact discovered was a decorative hair comb made of vulcanized rubber that women of the era were known to wear.

“There was a little bit of green material with embroidery on it," Peden said.  "I think it came from her coffin, something ornamental.” 

Peden also noted Elizabeth Gilbert Cole was quite a bit taller than her husband.

“We could tell she had back problems, which would’ve caused her great pain,” said Smithson, also an archeology student at HCC. “James was missing his feet. We don’t know if that was for a medical reason, or when that happened.” 

James Cole’s coffin had a “painted lid and sides” and several collar buttons were discovered, Gibb said in the report.

Partial skeletal remains were discovered in the collapsed coffins, but clothing did not survive. Most of what was found was hardware.

Peden described the nails found at the site as “sort of rectangular, with no heads."  

"But they weren’t made by a blacksmith,” he added.

They were what might now be referred to as cut nails.  Screws, escutcheons, hinges and handles were also found.  In addition, some personal objects were also unearthed, including buttons made of metal, shell and glass.

The grave of one other adult was also discovered.

“We don’t know who that is, yet,” Smithson said. “Since James was a veteran of the War of 1812, we used the record of his pension checks to narrow the time of death for his widow to a period between September and December of 1890, according to the time when the office was notified of her death.”

Jeanne Poole, a volunteer at the Harford County Historical Society who visited the site, said she was surprised by the cemetery’s location atop the hill.

“I didn’t realize it was going to be like climbing a cliff to get up there to the graves," Poole said. "I don’t know how they got anything down.”

When the Smithsonian Institution completes its identification efforts, the remains will return home to just a few miles from where they had been found: Baker Cemetery in Aberdeen is expected to be their final resting place.

The area where the family cemetery was found has been razed to below the level of the graves, said Dan Coates, an archeological technician involved in the project.

In other words, folks, there’s nothing to see.

But if people know of a family cemetery on their land, Smithson said, “It is good to record the information for future generation and place a copy of the list and pictures of the tombstones with Historical Society of Harford County.”