Volume Two, Issue 12

May 30, 2022

We desire to see everyone living in a healthy relationship with the Lord.

Joanna Snow Ministries is located in Downtown Mobile, and we love it!

Remains to be Seen

from Cossondra

Mobile has been a city since the 1700s. It was populated by French, Spanish, British, Native peoples, and eventually by Americans. When there are this many people in one area, there are things a city needs. Cities need food, government, places to trade, and good roads. Eventually, cities are also going to need cemeteries.

One of the earliest official cemeteries in Mobile was built by the Spanish and was called Campo Santo, or holy field, and was seen over by the Catholic church. The earliest recorded burial was in the 1780s, and the cemetery was in regular use for forty years. As the population of Mobile grew and the boundaries stretched west from the water, the city decided that the cemetery should be moved. The bodies interred there were moved a few blocks away to what is now called the Church Street Grave Yard. The cemetery there at the time had opened ten years earlier, so government officials purchased connecting land in order to enlarge it. The Catholic cemetery was approximately 400 feet by 300 feet, and the new cemetery would be four acres, allowing for the Campo Santo tenants and many more.

The timing of the enlargement of the burial grounds was fortunate because in the year that negotiations for the surrounding properties began, Mobile was hit was a yellow fever epidemic that killed nearly 300 people. At the time, that was about 20 percent of the city's population. They really needed a cemetery.

I suppose that it would be challenging to move a cemetery. A lot of elements would need to be right. The weather would need to be not too dry or too wet. Traffic might need to be addressed, stopped, or even rerouted. Perhaps clergy would want to oversee the work, and family members may want to be there.

Although some graves still go unmarked today, it was much harder to mark graves two hundred years ago. While some families could afford elaborate stone markers, many could not, and deceased loved ones might have been honored with a wooden stake or cross. Unfortunately, those rot and disappear during year after year of exposure to weather.

Seventy years after the Catholic cemetery was moved from its original place to the Church Street Grave Yard, city employees working on a new sewer line found bodies that had been left behind. Of course, no one knew who the people were when they were uncovered in the 1890s. And, I suppose that if they had markers orginally, they had disappeared before the other graves were moved. No one knew that these remains, well, remained.

I was unable to find out what happened to these unearthed bodies. But can you imagine the crew's surprise and horror when they found them? That was not what they were expecting to dig up on that job.

Sometimes we have things in our lives that we bury. Those things can be bad memories, hurt feelings, or dreams for the future. We bury them for different reasons. Maybe we are hurt too much by them. We want to forget and move forward. Maybe we feel that we have to bury them so that we can survive from day to day. Or, maybe we bury dreams because we are afraid they won't come true.

When we accidentally uncover one of the things we have buried, it's important to react in a healthy way. If something is uncovered, it probably needs to be dealt with before it is laid to rest again. So how do we do that?

My first suggestion is prayer. Ask God all the questions. Why did the issue get uncovered at that time? What feelings does it evoke? Why was it buried to begin with?

Then, maybe you can ask a trusted friend to hear you talk it out, or you may want to write your thoughts down to more easily sort through them. Either way, get the thoughts out of your head and into the air. It is so much easier to understand your thoughts when they aren't trapped in your head.

I don't believe in coincidences. If something you've buried becomes unearthed, don't just shift it to another cemetery. Place a marker in your life by addressing it.