WORKERS DISCOVER GRAVE; TWO CASKETS, BODIES FOUND NEAR SEMINARY

The Rev. Louis Derbes of Cape Girardeau held a crucifix and two buttons that were found Tuesday in a grave in a former cemetery of St. Vincent's Seminary.

Construction of a warehouse ended abruptly Tuesday when workers stumbled across a casket containing remains of a person buried in St. Vincent's Seminary cemetery perhaps as many as 150 years ago.

In the course of an investigation, another casket and remains of a second person were found adjacent to the first casket.

The workers at Standley Batch Systems in Cape Girardeau were preparing to pour cement for the concrete footings of the warehouse and machine shop when the discovery was made. The business is on land once owned by St. Vincent's Seminary near where the new Mississippi River bridge is under construction.

The holes for the footings were dug last week, but the concrete had not been poured because of rain. As workers tried to get the water from one of the holes, they discovered the casket.

Plant manager Ted Holzum contacted Richard Griffith, owner of the company, and told him of the discovery. Griffith, who was on a business trip, told his workers to contact the police, and he returned to Cape Girardeau.

Cape Girardeau County Coroner John Carpenter, who was also contacted, called a halt to further construction at the site until an investigation could be made to determine if the site were a crime scene. Once it was determined that no foul play was involved, but that the body was properly buried, then determination had to be made if the grave site was a part of a cemetery.

Carpenter also called the state archaeologist, who told him that the site was probably not of archaeological significance. The archaeologist gave Carpenter's office permission to continue its work at the grave.

The casket, a wooden box with ornate handles, was almost indistinguishable from the mud it was buried in. The casket lid had collapsed from the weight of dirt to the point that most of the casket was flattened.

A thick, reddish material recovered at the grave was part of the interior lining of the casket, Carpenter believed. Several white buttons found at various places in the grave site may have held the material in place, Carpenter speculated.

As Carpenter and others worked at the grave site, they discovered the second casket and remains. It appeared both were buried side by side.

The coroner said that his office would try to recover as much material as possible from the site and would try to identify the gender and age of the bodies. The remains will be buried elsewhere, he said.

Determining the gender and age of a person long-since deceased is important in deciding where the person's remains will be buried, said the Rev. Louis Derbes of St. Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville. Derbes, once a student and then a faculty member at St. Vincent's Seminary, was called to the scene shortly before noon because of his expertise on the cemetery on the seminary's grounds.

The first recorded burial in the cemetery was of a member of the Congregation of the Mission, the religious order founded by St. Vincent de Paul, which ran the seminary. The date was March 21, 1845.

Although the cemetery was the burial place for members of the order, it was also the site of graves for nuns and laity. A part of the cemetery was unconsecrated, meaning that people who were not baptized Catholics were buried in that section of the cemetery.

Derbes said it is important to determine who was buried in the graves in order to know where to bury the bodies. If a body is determined to be a member of the religious order, he may be buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Perryville. If the body is not a member of the order, he will be buried elsewhere, he said.

A few clues have already been discovered that may help. The first body was found to be holding a crucifix in his hand. The bones in the hand had turned slightly green from the metal in the crucifix.

Also, a religious medal was found with the first body. The type of medal it was suggested that the body could have come from no earlier than the 1850s or 1860s, perhaps later, Derbes said.

The cemetery that had sat on the grounds of the seminary was moved in 1923. Seven or eight of the graves that originally had been a part of the cemetery were never accounted for in the move, Derbes said.