Workers at The Citadel are continuing to sift soil slowly on hot summer days to remove human remains found in possibly 54 19th century gravesites on the eastside of Johnson Hagood Stadium, according to the college.
“Our archeological consultants are carefully documenting the site, disinterring and analyzing the remains found before they are respectfully reinterred,” college spokesman Zach Watson told the Charleston City Paper.
Meanwhile, the thought of Citadel football fans tailgating on land over the bones of the dead continues to infuriate Wagener Terrace resident Julie Bowling, who has spent recent years documenting the people buried in Tower Hill.
“The idea of people tailgating on top of the bodies of enslaved people next to a stadium named for a Confederate general is appalling,” she has said. “They never moved the bodies. They just erased them. And every few years, more are found.”
New drainage system led to discovery
The graves were discovered during the installation of a new drainage system beneath a new set of stands at the stadium that the city of Charleston built in 1927 on land that had served as a city-owned burial ground for nearly eight decades.
Workers were excavating the site to nearly 9 feet below sea level to install plastic chambers to hold excess water. The remains were found close to the surface, officials said.
Brockington and Associates, a Mount Pleasant cultural resources consulting company, has so far removed the remains from about 20 graves, said Ralph Bailey, the company’s vice president, in an interview. Bailey said he expects the work to be completed by Aug. 7.
Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal said that after the coroner’s office determined the presence of the remains was not the result of a crime, the investigation of the site was turned over to Brockington.
Watson said the remains are not in the area where the stands are being erected.
“[Work on] the main building and stands continues, but work on the drainage field has been adjusted to accommodate the archeologists,” Watson said.
The Citadel said it will reinter and memorialize any remains “in an expanded, protected area on the south side of the stadium,” according to a press release. “Additionally, The Citadel’s archaeological consultant assessed surrounding areas where construction activity is planned and found no evidence of additional gravesites.”
The college estimated construction would be completed before the school’s first home football game. Bailey said the recently discovered remains are possibly at the northern border of the Tower Hill Cemetery.
In the area, it is estimated that about 23,000 to 26,000 orphans, the poor, free and enslaved people, immigrants, seamen and Confederate soldiers were interred in unmarked graves at the site bounded by President, Congress and Line streets.
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