We have a cemetery in the city of Louisville,
Eastern Cemetery, that had the first crematorium
in the commonwealth of Kentucky, it started
in the 1930s, and in 1989 they were charged
with using burial ground more than once, in
fact mathematically they buried 130,000 people
where there's room for 30,000 burials. The
University of Louisville's involvement was
that my expertise involves physical anthropology
and archaeology as well, both of the levels
of expertise that they needed at the Attorney
General's office, I had helped them with a
number of investigations. So I was actually
involved with the investigations as a university
employee, a consultant as it were, who brought
objective evidence to the court. There was
a court order that brought the cremains to
the University of Louisville for safekeeping
because the ashes were being poured out and
the metal containers were being scrapped.
These things are very expensive and they were
being scrapped by metal scrappers in the city.
SO they were brought her for safekeeping,
a thousand sets of cremains were brought here
for safekeeping, and we've been able to return
probably about 800 or so to various family
members. And what happened was the Missing
in America group, who's looking to get veterans
buried where they belong and get cremains
to federal cemeteries, found the information
that we have available at our website, and
started asking specific questions and identifying.
They ultimately identified 54 individuals
who had been returned and they have been placed
in a columbarium in Radcliffe, KY in a federal
veterans' cemetery. As a result of having
these cremains, there have been a number of
positive benefits. We've had students who
have done research on the Black undertakers
in the city of Louisville, demographic studies
on infant mortality rates, diseases that were
rampant in the 19th century, that sort of
thing. Because of the expertise we have at
the University of Louisville, we've been able
to assist the criminal investigations that's
resulted in research that has allowed our
students to get involved with the local community.
