ground-penetrating radar

Lane Street Project: 4,224.

Jen Kehrer is an early and avid supporter of Lane Street Project, and we love her for it. The past couple of years, a new job has taken her outside Wilson County, but she came back today to deliver a message. 

Kehrer installed fence stitching bold enough to see from the road. 4,224. The number of grave anomalies detected in Vick Cemetery with ground-penetrating radar. The number — the minimum number — of ancestors who lie beneath this featureless sod. We remember Vick’s dead.

Thank you, Jen Kehrer! Your allyship is deeply appreciated.

(Also, Day 18.)

Photos courtesy of J. Kehrer, December 2025.

Lane Street Project: Wilmington’s Maides Cemetery.

Goals.

Historic Wilmington Foundation is partnering with a community advocate Kathy King to preserve and protect Wilmington’s historic African-American Maides Cemetery. University of North Carolina-Wilmington joined in to conduct ground-penetrating radar to help determine the cemetery’s limits as well find out more about those interred there.

Historic Wilmington’s website links an enviable storymap that reveals the cemetery’s history in detail.

Thanks to Jane Cooke Hawthorne for the tip!

Bravo, Iredell County Public Library!

Kudos to the Statesville, N.C., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. for recognizing (and partnering with) Shellie Taylor, Joel Reese, and Iredell County Public Library for their exemplary work with Statesville’s Green Street Cemetery project. Further congrats to the library on its invitation to speak at the North Carolina Humanities Luncheon about library projects funded by N.C. Humanities, including the ground-penetrating radar at Green Street Cemetery! (There’s an idea!)

Lane Street Project: resetting and repainting.

In June 2023, New South Associates returned to Vick Cemetery to mark graves straddling two property lines with small painted wooden blocks. Though no one who’s been paying attention was surprised that graves lie astride and outside the cemetery’s modern boundaries, the little orange markers were nonetheless shocking visual proof that we still don’t know how many people lie in this public burial ground.

As we observed just a few days ago, since N.S.A. reported on their work in August, Wilson City Council spared even a glance at Vick.

Yesterday, R. Briggs Sherwood and Castonoble Hooks of Lane Street Project’s Senior Force worked in Vick Cemetery to repaint and reset faded and dislodged blocks. Thank you! The blocks were not intended to be permanent markers and inevitably have been jostled by the Cemetery Commission’s crew that regularly tends the grounds. (They are the ones who sprayed defoliant in small circles around each block to keep weeds from overrunning them.)

Cass, Briggs, and the Lane Street Project faithful have not forgotten the 4,224 who lie here. Have you?

Photos courtesy of Castonoble Hooks.

Lane Street Project: “linear anomalies.”

The power poles are not the only utilities in Vick Cemetery.

New South Associates’ GPR report revealed three “linear anomalies” that they interpreted as utility lines. Two of them appear to postdate the 1994 grading of the cemetery and disturbed multiple graves during construction. What in the world are they?

Utility Lines 1 and 2 are marked below. (New South believes Line 3, the pink T-shape off the green path, dates to the period the cemetery was active. It does not cross graves.)

Per Wilson County GIS information, “soil and water drainage tiles” run under the southwest quadrant of Vick Cemetery. It is not clear if this is what GPR detected. It would seem an odd location for drainage infrastructure as this is a relatively high, flat section of the site. If they are drainage lines, who placed them and when? I’ll seek more information from Wilson County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Lane Street Project: New South’s updated recommendations.

The final report New South Associates submitted to the City on August 14 contained augmented recommendations. (The originals may be seen here.) The most notable change is the addition of a recommendation that the City develop a comprehensive cemetery management plan. My thoughts in red.

Lane Street Project: the border markers.

Here’s the graphic I requested last week. New South Associates displayed it in its PowerPoint presentation to City Council, but did not include it in the final version of the GPR survey report.

The blue dots correspond to the little wooden blocks, spray-painted orange, that New South placed along three edges of Vick Cemetery on June 29. Each pair of blocks marks the head and foot of a grave close to or straddling Vick Cemetery’s current property lines. The City asked for this in service of its stubborn quest for a fence around the site.

It’s a little hard to see. I’ll zoom in. You might want to refresh your memory of our little videoed walk last month as you view these maps.

First, the street-edge of Grid 9, which runs from the parking lot past two power poles. At the far upper right, you’ll see a bit of yellow line. It marks the edge of the public right-of-way, and thus the cemetery’s present-day front boundary. New South did not survey the right-of-way, but there is no reason to believe there are no graves there. Look carefully at the fuzzy gray strip slanting across the image. This is the ditch. At the first power pole, at upper right, do you see where it widens a bit? That’s here, where runoff cascades after every hard rain, and crawfish flap their swimmerets. Several blue dots sit right on the line, and others just inside it, where a fence would run if anyone were so unwise as to install one.

Next, Grid 1, the northwest corner of the cemetery. The graves continue along the edge of the right-of-way. As we round the corner, we are in the corridor marked by Piedmont Natural Gas as the location of a natural gas pipeline easement (though no such easement was filed or recorded at Wilson County Register of Deeds.) In other words, as we’ve seen, there is a gas line running along the edge of the cemetery. There are also, as the blue dots indicate, several graves straddling the border.

Next, the middle section of the western edge. Again, several graves straddle the border.

Finally, the back section. The yellow line is the property line. New South surveyed to the line on the western edge of the property, so its red grid line is shown atop the property line. As New South did not survey all the way to the property line on the back edge of the cemetery, we don’t know where or how many graves lie in this narrow strip. Along the west side, several dots lie on the property line, and one completely outside it in the  natural gas pipeline easement.

Lane Street Project: the August 17 city council meeting.

Well, that was a disappointment.

First, before the meeting, not one of the four council members I wrote on August 11 — Bell, Creech, Johnson, and Morgan — responded with as much as an acknowledgment of receipt. Needless to say, none moved for any of the actions requested.

Second, the New South Associates presentation was rather less … robust than I expected. I did appreciate the modified recommendations, which I’ll detail once I get my hands on the actual report, but included a comprehensive cemetery management plan to ensure that future leaders know exactly what exists at the site and what has been done there.

Third, the utter lack of engagement by council, whose members asked exactly two questions. Bell wanted to know what pages the recommendations are on. Evans wanted to know what “cmbs” means (which tells me he didn’t read the report he got in April) and what thirty centimeters is in inches. Nobody else cracked their lips. To be fair, it was not until New South Associates’ representative had begun to speak that Rebecca Agner and another city employee actually trooped in to hand out copies of the updated version of the report to council members. City attorney Jim Cauley, in trying to execute some kind of flex, pointedly asked New South when they had provided the City the report, seeming to imply that it was hot off the press. New South flatly countered with a date four days prior to the meeting — Monday, August 14. (And thus Cauley violated the first rule of cross-examination — don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to.) Once again, a city staffer got the report and sat it on it until the absolute last minute before giving it to council, turning last night’s presentation into pure performance. What was the point of bringing New South all the way from Greensboro if the city wasn’t going to give council a chance to study and develop questions? Though all seven councilmembers have had the original version since April, and this one is not radically different in content, withholding the updated report smells bad. Still, they needn’t have read the report to ask questions like, “Specifically, how does one install a fence under these conditions?” “Is digging up the parking lot a good idea?” “Should we be concerned about the graves in the public right-of-way?” “How can we mark the graves?”

Fourth — and the good part — come *clap* through *clap* Lane Street Project! Although I couldn’t watch them — Wilson shuts off cameras during public comment — kudos to the citizens who stepped to the mic to give voice to the desires of the descendant community. As Briggs Sherwood said, “We are here to claim our ancestors, to redeem our past. Hallelujah, what an opportunity!”

Lane Street Project: WRAL and the August 17 agenda.

First, WRAL’s reporter advises that his piece on Vick Cemetery will air tonight, August 16, during the 7 o’clock broadcast. Please tune in.

Second, the agenda for Thursday night’s council meeting has been posted. Note item 3d.

This is a surprise, but a generally welcome one, as we have asked the City to take advantage of New South Associates’ expertise. I urge alertness though. Do not let the City position New South as the only voice that matters, and their opinions, therefore, as the end of the discussion about Vick’s future.

On information, Sarah Lowry’s recommendations will go to how the City can prevent further ground disturbance at Vick Cemetery. This is a curious focus as, for the past 110 years, all the unwarranted ground disturbance out there has been at the City’s hand. Who would a fence keep out? Who rampaged through with bush hogs and graders and asphalt and power poles? The City of Wilson and its various contractors, and we already know how to stop that. Recent incursions like dumping and spinning can be thwarted with simple chains that the Cemetery Commission’s grounds crew can unlock when they need to access the site.

I’d rather hear what New South has to say about the bodies lying in the public right-of-way or about the right and role of descendant communities in determining what to do at Vick. If you go to tomorrow’s meeting, please ask New South, or the City, what should be done about the power poles erected inside the cemetery? Or the guy wires that continue to stab into the earth? What are the recommendations for marking individual graves (as has been done in Statesville)? For placement of interpretive signage? Can the parking pad be safely removed (since this is Grant Goings’ bright, new idea)? If so, can  the 18 or so graves beneath it be exhumed (and DNA-tested) and reinterred in Rest Haven? What about exhumation of graves lying in the right-of-way?

Also, ask council for

  • an independent investigation into the disappearance of the headstones removed in 1995-96 (and of the document(s) identifying those markers);
  • ground-penetrating radar of the unsurveyed edges of the cemetery, especially the public right-of-way at the front, where New South’s markers already show the presence of graves;
  • preparation of a full land survey map of the cemetery showing all physical features, easements, and rights-of-way;
  • formal engagement with the descendant community (outside the constrains of a city council meeting).

Please show up in numbers tomorrow night. Take notes. Record. This will be a crucial meeting. Thank you!

Lane Street Project: where the last gravestones stood.

This, of course, is the map of Vick Cemetery plotting the locations of all its visible graves circa 1995. The version I received from the City in response to a records request was grainy, but Wilson Times supplied a cleaner version. The City has not provided (or cannot provide, because it is lost or was never created in the first place) a key to the numbers or otherwise identifying the locations and names on gravestones. However, a friend with surveying experience has cracked the code on the numbering system.

To recap, a surveyor prepared this map ahead of the removal of overgrowth and grading of Vick Cemetery. All detectable graves, whether marked by gravestones or indicated by grave depressions, were numbered and plotted on the map.

Per information, the cemetery’s corner pins and other control points are labeled with the lowest numbers and are highlighted in yellow on the map above. On the right, a broad white expanse reveals that the surveyor did not detect any graves in a strip of land along its northeastern edge, representing approximately twenty percent of the cemetery’s surface. (This is the edge that includes today’s parking lot.) It’s not clear why this is so, as gravestones and slumps are clearly visible today on the other side of the fence that divides Vick and Odd Fellows, and GPR has revealed that this section of the cemetery is quite dense with grave anomalies.

The numbers 20 to about 200 were assigned to graves marked with objects, whether headstones, foot stones, vault covers, slabs, or other markers. Those graves are highlighted in light blue. I know it’s a little tough to see, so I’ve zoomed in one section:

I apparently will never lose the ability to be struck dumb by a Vick discovery. Will you look at this? Look at that row of five graves numbered 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113. Surely this was a family plot, marked with headstones, until the City pulled them up and tossed them, figuratively speaking, in a pit.

Per this map, just under 200 grave markers were standing in 1995 when the City hauled them out. Untold numbers of markers, like the dozens we’ve unearthed in Odd Fellows Cemetery, undoubtedly lay just below the soil surface. We may not know the names of these 200 but, with this highlighted map and the precise location data supplied in New South Associates’s report, we know exactly where they were.

The location of graves 109 through 113 on the Vick Cemetery GPR map.