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Archiver > ALT-GENEALOGY > 2000-08 > 0965183465


From: Steve Cox <>
Subject: Re: Visting Old Family Cemeteries
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 22:31:05 -0400


There supposedly is- I 've heard that you can't be arrested for trespassing on a
cemetery, even if it is on private property. I don't know about crossing
private property to get to it though.....

A few years ago we came across the same thing. We found a family cemetery (our
family) on some private property. It was over one hundred years old and the
present owners of the land were desecrating it by dumping their broken down
appliances on it, which was against the law. We hired a lawyer so we could
arrange to have that stopped and to be able to restore the cemetery but after
several years of getting nowhere we finally arranged to go in, remove the
headstones and buy a plot of land in the local cemetery and "move" the family
cemetery to a family plot there. We carried some "ceremonial" dirt from the old
cemetery (since there probably wouldn't have been much to exhume- these people
were just country folk and probably were buried in cheap pine boxes.) We had a
nice dedication ceremony. I think this was our only recourse to remember and to
pay our respects to our ancestors. We'd still be tied up in legal proceedings
otherwise.

Steve Cox
Fremont, NE

Tom Coker wrote:

> Recently I found an old family cemetery in Edgefield County SC. This
> cemetery is a little over a 1/4 mile off the road, down a private drive,
> with POSTED NO TRESSPASSING signs at the entrance of the drive. The people
> who own the land do not live in the county. I could find no address or phone
> number to call to ask for permission to survey and photograph the cemetery.
> My question is this : Is there a law that protects my rights as a descendent
> of this family to visit this cemetery? I have heard that there is - but I
> have yet to find one on record and don't quite know where to look.

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