GREENWOOD — “Are you afraid of ghosts?” asks Bob Perry.
Perry was using ground penetrating radar to detect bodies under the soil in the Cummings Plot across from the Greenwood Town Beach where three war veterans are buried: Joseph Cummings; Joseph Cummings Sr., and Joseph Cummings Jr. One wife named Ruth, and a baby named Wellington.
A logger allegedly decimated the cemetery in the 1960s as reported by Greenwood resident, Blaine Mills.
Using radar, Perry said he could see the three graves on his screen. “GPR [ground penetrating radar] measures soil disturbance. I’m looking for an anomaly and I’m looking for a curve… that’s a grave. Sometimes graves can be curved, it all depends if they are completely flat, or if they have collapsed down to nothing. Typically you’ll see a concave dip.”
He can often determine the length, depth and width of a body, but said, “here it’s very difficult. I may be just picking up the skull or chest cavity.” At one point he thinks he may have picked up a steel plate, something once commonly found on caskets.
Radar does not work well after a storm. Cellphones, or a passing train are all interference he deals with. He said interference causes the radar to flat line.
While Perry rolled his machine across the recently cleared cemetery plot, archeologist, Jo Felice, circled the lower edge along the river to see if the headstones were perhaps pushed over the culvert toward the nearby river.
Watching from a lawn chair, Clayton Bartlett of Rumford said his mother was Laura Cummings of Vernon Street, Bethel. He said he’s related to all the Cummings.
Another Cummings’ descendant, Sue Nusbaum initiated the project, ” There are the right number [of graves] that we think should be here. We think this is a huge success. He {Perry] has found enough so we can place the headstones. We may not be able to place them on the right individual. We are not going to dig up the graves and disturb them. We are now looking for headstones.”
The next step for the group led by Nusbaum is to erect the headstones. Three new ones have been engraved with help from Commander Harry Orcutt and money from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. The group will likely engrave the names of the baby and wife on the back of the corresponding stones if they receive the money needed to do so.
In the meantime, they are still searching for the original stones in hopes that they will be returned anonymously or uncovered in the culvert.
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