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Subscribe to RSSA hospital expansion project in San Jose, Calif., has been halted after constructions crews unearthed more than 1,000 coffins filled with the bodies of people whose families couldn't afford proper burials. The pine boxes date back to between 1875 and 1935. KNTV's Kimberly Tere reports.
Construction at a portion of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center has stopped in San Jose, Calif., because crews have unearthed pine boxes filled with the bodies of those whose families couldn't afford their proper burials, NBC Bay Area has learned.
The pine boxes date back to between 1875 and 1935, and were discovered in February when construction crews were doing seismic survey work, Santa Clara County counsel Michael Rossi said Tuesday.
For more, visit NBCBayArea.com.
He said the county had no idea there was a cemetery on the property.
"It’s a potter’s field or a pauper’s graveyard. Between 1875 and 1935 at Valley Medical Center, people who died indigent, whose families couldn’t be found were buried at this site," Rossi said.
There are as many as 1,445 bodies on the site. The county filed a petition with the court to get permission to remove at least 100 of the pine coffins to make room for construction.
The county is looking into hiring an archaeologist who specializes in this type of find, Rossi said.
If anything identifiable is found, Rossi said they would publish the information in the newspaper to give families time to claim the remains.
After that, the county will ask the court's permission to dispose of the bodies in accordance to law.
A county map from 1932 shows the cemetery, but by 1958 there was no indication it existed. By 1966, there was an employee parking lot on top of the cemetery.
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Apparently somebody left the bodies but only moved the headstones. THEY ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!!
I actually watched that movie last night!!!
Happened all the time in the past.
That would explain the poltergeists showing up in the X-rays.
The bodies were buried in cheap pine boxes. There would have been no headstones, only wooden markers that long ago rotted away.
@Robert757A - I know. I was paraphrasing the movie Poltergeist.
'...1932 shows the cemetery, but by 1958 there was no indication it existed.'
So politicians didn't turn crooked just lsat week/
Pine box was about the only thing available in the late 1800's. and it was cheap...poor people ...paupers...duh. Only idiots spend thousands on fancy caskets to bury dead people.
Our small waterfront town just completed a "renovation" to the downtown area. During the course of construction, "Indian" bones were found even though the city officials were notified, and ignored, that there was a high potential the construction site was in proximity to an "Indian burial site".
Needless to say, $ 600,000 taxpayer payment to the "Tribe" later, the work has been completed.
Virtually anywhere in California, especially the Sata Clara area has unknown grave sites. Some corporations do know that and have at least one archeaolgist at a site that is expected to have burial sites of Indians. i worked security at a site that did that. My question to the company was, "Would you be digging up a grave if it was your ancestor?" Now that they have REFOUND THEIR pauper graves and are now a very rich Hospital, they should properly bury all of them.
We hope you enjoy your stay at Cuesta Verde Hospital, eternally.
Makes you wonder if this was found when the parking lot was built on top of it.Surely someone knew.
standingwave. Of course they knew. If anyone has started their ancestry trails, you will find that Connecticut, Massachusetts have most of their cemeteries preserved. Pennsylvania has covered over quite a few of theirs for parking lots and golf courses. Indiana is another that have covered with parking lots and golf courses. You know they did not remove the coffins just the stones and probably destroyed them none for the wiser. There is a gravestone I believe in Illinois that the head stones were used as paths and road material. There is a project there that is carefully digging and saving the stones. I remember one of the names to be Loomis. Then the site came down or was paid only site to help with money.
Ido...that's a good idea...I mean the $600,000. I think I will claim that some of my ancestors are in this graveyard and make them pay me a cool 1/2 million or so.
Hey! Backoff, I got dibs on this scam!
These human beings were violated. First, when they were just thrown in this cemetary and then in the 50's when they no longer identified it as a cemetary but rather a parking lot. It is sad to see that such greed existed so many years ago and continued decade after decade. Hopefully, this greed will stop today and these human beings should now be entitled to a proper burial with a proper funeral, casket and headstones identifying who they are!
They should really relocate the graves and give them a proper burial.
Charlie beat me to the joke
LOL, Charlie!!!!!!!
On the Eastern Seaboard this event is as common as rain. Much older this side of the country and there are cemeteries marked and unmarked everywhere. My grandfather told me in the 1930's new deal they sometimes put the roads right over them without anyone saying a thing. As a child my uncle and I walked out in the state forest in the next state where he lived and he showed me graves of "half breeds", drifters, and undesirables that were not allowed in regular graveyards..there is nothing more than an small inscribed stone the size of a shoebox with the dates and you have to dig for it under the loam. They are not on any map. When I am gone no one will even know they are there.
The passage of time....and not long time.....is the fate of many, if not most, graveyards. Their existence becomes quickly 'forgotten' for profit of the 'living'.
Not in other countries.
@MasterQ,
Ever hear of a Country called Rome, how about France, England, Isreal, Germany, Mexico, etc. etc.
They find unknown graves all the time, please read sometime.
Yes it happens in other countries. John Knox, executed in Scotland as a martyr, and famous enough to get into the history books, is buried under a parking space in the cathedral grounds in Edinburgh. Asian cultures often only let dead people stay in a site for a few years, to be moved offsite after that. The dead shouldn't hold on to the living and there are too many people in this world for us to think we can occupy the ground for ever.
Earth is for the living. Everything is recycled. Cemeteries are a very unsanitary way to dispose of the bodies. The county is just wasting money on this kind of 'research'.
soylent green...process the dead in the name of enviromental protection
Rome is also my favorite "country"
American Citizen-1779594:
Rome was a country (empire) smart a$$
Ah, yes, the countries of Isreal and Unreal, always diametrically opposed.
I believe he was referring to graveYARDS, not single graves. You aren't likely to find any place that doesn't have lots of unknown single graves. No one said the discovery of actual mass burying grounds that were known to many and have apparently been forgotten by official idiots is unheard of, but it seems to be more common in the US.
Max..."Earth is for the living. Everything is recycled."
And in about 5 billion years, according to current theory, the Sun will swell into a red giant and vaporize the entire solar system.
Poltergiest!
"After that, the county will ask the court's permission to dispose of the bodies in accordance to law."
Why don't they find a cemetery or plot of land to relocate them to and then give them a proper reburial? If these people were paupers and indigents when they died can't we at least give them a proper burial this time around instead of just chucking them into the trash heap?
Relocating the bodies with a proper burial would be the decent thing to do.
It is too bad they cannot turn the area into a "memorial" of sorts but I know construction has to go on, especially if it involves expanding a medical center.
But I wonder what is acceptable under local laws in San Jose, Califonia?
That is what dispose of the bodies means. Dispose, does not mean "to throw away." It literally means "to put in place."
What's a "proper burial"? It means something different for everyone. They've been dead for decades, I'm sure it makes no difference to them whether the remains go into a museum or get tossed into a dumpster. At this point, any kind of ceremony is just superstitious.
How can you give them a proper burial if you cannot find out who they are?
Have you ever had an encounter with the dead. Who says it makes no difference to them?
Cremate everything, including the caskets. We have no way of knowing what these people died of and should not risk exposing anyone to whatever killed these people. I'm surprised that there is anything left, pine decays fairly quickly, as do un-preserved human remains. That's most likely why the cemetery was removed from the county map, as well as so someone could take advantage of selling the real estate.
Actually, it makes NO difference to the dead. But they appreciate that it makes a difference to the living. In this case, anyone who knew them is long gone as well, so it's a moot point. Primarily the bodies and boxes are of historical and archaeological interest.
Whatever, dead @!$%#ers. GET OFF MY LAWN!
These dead people are always under foot.
300 people a day are buried in Potters field on Hart Island in NY. They are buried in mass graves, and have been so for decades. No one seems to be squalling about that. Read up on it.
See, no matter what you do or how important you think you are. The end result is a pine box under a Honda. Soon forgotten.
so sad...cremate the remains and put them in a cemetery under a headstone with the story of there plite.
Just build over the cemetery, they are dead and will not know the difference.
Gasp
You can't. For one reason they have to remove all the earth to pour foundations and the basement of the building.
That's when you mix the dead people with the concrete, Hoffa style.
Tough words from RETIRED&HAPPY remember soon u will be DEAD&BURIED ..perhaps under a parking lot too !
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return" (Genesis 3:19)
Why do we bury people in coffins that could likely survive a nuclear attack? Plain wooden box for me. Or actually cremated and will make do with a cardboard urn.
I heard the Chinese are eating capsules of dry roasted humans now. A solution to all the overcrowded graveyards!
Given the "circle of life" cycle, we're all munching on grammy and grampy, to some extent.
That would explain the Soylent Green billboards going up across China...
"Listen to me Hatcher, you gotta tell 'em: SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"
Dry Roasted? Why not Bar-B-Q?
Since these people were indigents, we should cut off their Social Security, Medicare and any other government assistance programs and let them dig their own way out of this mess!
to HughJordan12............not funny, but I was chuckling here at work..... shhhh
HughJorgan12 - that made me belly laugh. Thanks. Haven't had one of those in quite some time. Again, thank you!
USArmy(ret) - me too - at work. Now the whole office is chuckling with me!
us, you mean in korea someone was trying to sell pillswith ground up babies in them...china/south korea fyi.
Here, at Questa Verde Hospital...
I guess the property did not have to immediately change hands just before this project because given that our journalist here has found that it was on the 1932 county map, the folks at the title company would have seen that when they crawled the title and flagged it as a possible issue.
Beyond that, you can't really have big cemetary plots and headstones for everyone who ever lives. It takes up a lot of room. It all comes out of waiting for judgement day I guess, but if the idea is that you need to keep the body parts together, well then maybe you should revisit what moriticians actually do.
Yup. That was a bad title search. The title insurer will probably be paying the costs.
When most people are buried in a grave they buy and pay for that little bit of space. It's not that much land but, they bought it and they own it. You can't say they don't deserve to be buried there. It's their space where they wanted to be buried, bought and paid for years ago. If someone gave that land for them to be buried there because most of them did have any place to be buried then, it should still be a cemetery. You don't just take the land and say too bad.
Umm. Larry? They were indigent (translated: they didn't have the cash to pay for coffee let alone a plot).
And you'd be surprised by how often this stuff happens. My wife is a Landscape Architect. It happens a lot more often than most people would guess.
Landscape Architect? Isn't that a fancy way of saying 'gardener'? :D
Cremation and a single headstone works for me.
cremation..and spread my ashes over my favorite beaches at the jersey shore and caribbean...
I wonder if any of those Toyota's with the sticking accelerators was some of the cars that parked there?
even if you put just one headstone for all of them, What would you put on the headstone, if you donot even know who was buried. Wait for some, time and see if anybody claims anything. otherwise I say just put up a webpage, and put the link on the headstone. Then as and how it is discovered who it was, the webpage could be updated. Nowadays, anybody who visits the site, is bound to have an internet phone, and can look it up.
I say that's a pretty good idea actually!
Even indigent people have names. I'm sure there are records of whom is buried there somewhere. There may be a few "unknown" but most of them will have names, ages, death dates, etc. Be kind of hard to do one headstone for 1,400 people (or however many are actually buried there).
I'm big in to genealogy so this stuff really interests me and I think it's sad that many cemeteries are displaces during construction, etc. I know times change, things change, etc. but I just hate the thought of one of my family members being buried under a parking lot, or dug up and thrown in a dumpter. Just doesn't sit well with me.
After a grave yard fills up, How many years does it take before it has no more visitors? It's got to be less than 100
I'm not sure what you are saying. I have family members buried over 100 years ago at our cemetery. I bought plants yesterday to put on the grave sites for the up coming Memorial day weekend, as I have for the 32 years. My parents did it before me. Their parents before them. My son as a young boy loved hearing the history and stories as we planted and watered. He would insist on us caring for 1 grave site that was not ours, that needed care. I have added that tradition to the previous ones. I am at the cemetery every 2-4 days to water the plants as needed till the freeze in the Fall.
That said, I don't believe for a minute that my family and ancestors currently in any form are at that location. But it is a great family moment to teach respect and caring. We just don't seem to have that anymore.
On this Pauper's Cemetery. Wow, I just don't know. We had a cemetery on a hill, that with time, the caskets ended sliding into a neighborhood farm and were being exposed. The farmer was more than willing to not farm, lose his income from that land, till the families could be contacted and the coffins relocated. Just his respect for the dead and living.
I just think some how the burial site should be relocated somehow. Cremated and place at a public space for all to go and reflect? An effort to find the descendants?
By the way, cemetaries near hospitals extremely common years ago. Many are buried around hospitals with no documentation. Hospitals often did not acknowledge them and built over them. Mental and TB institutions did the same. It wasn't our of disrespect, it just was practical.
rjw007,
I knew people like you were out there, you're a dying breed.
I can see visiting your grand parents, parents, siblings and god forbid your kid(s) once in a while.
Anymore than that is, -for me anyway "too much time at the cemetary" I'll be spending enough time there some day.
How soon until we have "condo' 'cemetaries? "Rack em and Stack em"
Hugh.. What are you talking about? They do it now. Already have those in the US in various places. They stack the coffins on top of each other in the same hole at various depths up to six one atop another.
Here is just one example I just looked up after I wrote this:
http://www.wbez.org/story/cemetery/proposed-state-law-three-caskets-one-grave
Probably no listings will be found as to who was buried there. Maybe ALL family members have died or moved away. It could take YEARS to find even one person. Are they going to be moving ALL graves or just the ones in their way? I personally don not think I want to be parked on for all eternity.
Sounds like the typical government screw up that happens all over this country. They move a few of the graves and leave all the other there, then tell everyone they moved them all. It was all about the money and they didn't want to pay for all of them to be moved. It's like look there a cemetery and now it's gone...POOF! And in California it probably happens more than any where else.
So true, Larry13555, We had an old Catholic cemetery across the street from our local university. It had some beautiful headstones and statuary. The Church sold it to the University (I think there was an issue of eminent domain), and I could see from my dorm window the graves being removed. Eventually dorms and a parking lot were built over what had been the cemetery. A few years ago, the parking lots were excavated to build more dorms, and more burials turned up; they hadn't gotten them all the first time.
Incidentally, most of the headstones and statuary were used as landfill, unless any survivors that could be found were able to pay for them to be moved to the cemetery where the old burials would be relocated.
Great argument for cremation and scattering. Nothing lasts forever, even 'eternal rest'.
Since when does the "government' move graves? What branch of government handles the digging of graves?
I say let the dead rest in peace.
Ironically, if the body is dead it is neither resting nor capable of feeling peace.
So villian157 you have decided human beings no longer, or never possessed a soul? An amazing feat, especially if you did this all on your own without any help from the real world!
The human soul leaves the earthly confines of it's human form and proceeds on to the next level of conscienceness upon the death of the human body. The saying of Rest In Peace is meant for the soul or spirit of the deceased and not for the body of the deceased.
No pun intended but it sounds like a cover up for real estate profit in the 1950's.
Pauper or unknowns were usually not given the luxury of a hearstone. Someone (like family) has to pay for them. A plot marker with a number on it was about as fancy as it got.
When life leaves a body it is no more that inert matter - cremate, cry a little, than move on. Life is for the living.
Gee, wasn't the movie Poldergiest filmed in CA about a housing developement build over a cementary? Anybody want to stay in that new wing of the hospital? Very likely the ghosts will be sitting in the isles with tin cups asking for alms!
I have a feeling Steven Spielberg, the writer of the movie Poltergeist had an insider tip about real estate development and dirty deals which occurred in California during the 1950's. Awful lot of coincidence in this story and the movie (of course without the evil spirits).
This is before the state was populated by tree-hugging commies. In those days, when you found a cemetary, you built on top of it. Today, they'd spend a billion dollars to find out who was buried there, so they could litigate and divide the land among their families.
What in the world do they mean they want to move the bodies that are in the way, and dispose of them????? That is cruel and awful.
Cruel? - I don't think they were going to reanimate them - were they???????????????
That would be cruel
Freedom, another funny. Thanks!