Mo. developer discovers graveyard on home site

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A few days after Mike Bauer bought 96 acres at Longview Lake near Grandview five years ago, a neighbor asked him if knew about the graveyard and the old man who periodically visited.

Bauer, who had paid $400,000 for the land and planned to build his dream home there, said he did not.

He found out that the 35-by-60-foot plot in the middle of his property didn't even belong to him because a Strode family member in 1850 had taken out a separate deed on the cemetery, which now held generations of the family's dead.

City officials required Bauer, 48, to either move the bodies or build a paved access road leading to the graveyard. Moving the bodies would cost $180,000, he said, and building a road would cost even more.

Bauer took aim at the title company that hadn't found the graveyard deed, claiming the mistake had reduced the property's value by $388,000. Stewart Title Guaranty Co., which provided his title insurance, disagreed and said the mistake hadn't affected the land's value at all, although it offered $10,000 in damages.

He eventually filed a lawsuit and a Jackson County jury awarded him $100,000.

Bauer said he plans to move the remains and build his house on the property, although to do that he will have to gain control of the gravesite in probate court from two dozen Strode descendants scattered across the country.

That process was simplified somewhat three years ago when Bauer helped John J. Strode get his car out of the mud during one of his visits to the family plot. Strode, an elderly man and former Grandview postmaster, later gave Bauer contact information for the rest of the family. They agreed the bodies could be moved.

John Strode died in August. His daughter, Kay Harbert of Tucson, Ariz., said most of the bodies belong to her family, with the last burial believed to be in the 1920s. The Strodes lost the farm during the Depression.

But the number of bodies won't be known exactly until workers open up the ground and search. Family lore maintains there are slaves and possibly others buried there, along with three or four Civil War-era soldiers who died in a nearby skirmish.

Harbert added that her father a few years ago brought in a body dowser, who uses a pair of sticks similar to dowsers who search for water, who indicated there were bodies outside the known grave site.

"I hope things work out for Mike," she said. "He may want to leave them all."

But Bauer already has removed tons of debris and junked cars and still plans to build an 18,000-square-foot house. He said he hopes to reach a deal with a local funeral home, giving the family a section of an established graveyard.

"We'll get these people moved," he said. "It's one of those deals -- who wants a cemetery in your front yard?"