Unit 3: Oral History

There have been many trips to Tom Sawyer Park made by me to learn more about the Central State Hospital cemetery that has been forgotten in the fields. I discovered the abandoned cemetery as I took the Goose Creek Trail through the park. For the whole time, I just wandered on the trail, taking pictures of anything that caught my eye such as weirdly spiraled roots coming through the earth, as well as going a bit off of it as well. I enjoyed holding my hands out and grasping onto the leaves pouring off the trees next to me just to feel. The trail then opened up to reveal wild fields filled with all kinds of plant life. When the trail opened up, a fence showed itself lining the path. It is old, rundown, and in several spots, the fence is fallen down completely baring the field to outsiders it may be protecting the area from. I became one of those outsiders as I decided to venture across the field. That is when I came across headstones beneath the tremendous sized tree casting a protective shadow.

Philip DiBlasi measuring a cranium with a student.

Jackman, Michael. Photo of Philip DiBlasi. 2005.

      UofL Magazine, Louisville. Web. 5 July 2011.

Everything in the cemetery screams being forgotten and abandoned. Simply put, you do not even realize that it is a cemetery. From revealing themselves, I yearned to learn more about the headstones and the cemetery. To do this, I looked towards Mr. Philip DiBlasi. Mr. DiBlasi is an archeologist with expertise in historic cemeteries and their preservation specifically in Kentucky who is also a professor at the University of Louisville teaching an introduction to archeology class and skeletal forensics.

According to DiBlasi, “traces of the cemeteries were first discovered when the Central Asylum grounds were being converted into the park grounds for Tom Sawyer Park. It was cleaned up for hikers, and down by the creek some headstones were discovered, but nothing was done because no one thought about the chance there was a cemetery” (Personal Interview). 

There was a name change from the Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane to the Central State Hospital. DiBlasi associates the change to the hospital becoming institutionalized. In his opinion, “it is a poor euphemism. Often, when the mental asylums were institutionalized, the names where changed so that a more positive light would be displayed on them whereas in reality, many bad things occurred” (Personal Interview).

There are actually two different cemeteries on the grounds for the Central State Hospital. In 1991, the newer cemetery was the only known cemetery and DiBlasi was called in as an expert to survey the land. DiBlasi says, “I was called in to identify the boundaries of the cemetery and that was it. We had no idea that there was another older, unmarked cemetery” (Personal Interview).  In June of 1997, a man and his 2 grand kids found a few headstones in the creek bed of Goose Creek face down. They brought the site to the attention of the Courier Journal where more action was taken at the state level. The state took action to call upon Philip DiBlasi once more. This time a large scale attempt was made to clearly identify the cemetery land and the graves.

According to DiBlasi, “I was contacted again and hired to identify the cemetery boundaries to allow the park to mark off the land as the cemetery. To do this, my team and I scraped the area to identify each grave. The process is not invasive and you do not disturb the bodies whatsoever because you can tell the outlines of the graves based on the soil colors. When the land is disturbed, the soil forms layers. What we look for is discolor of the combination of red and gray. The land that we surveyed was the two sites and I would say that it is approximately 15 acres of land where both the areas had reached their full capacity. The headstones that were found by the creek were taken, cleaned up, and put under the tree in the middle of the cemetery.” (Personal Interview).

An interesting part of the scraping is where you can identify the years when the individuals were buried. This is done through the shape of the grave of whether it is a coffin or a casket. According to DiBlasi, “from 1890 to present, the funeral industry shifted from handmade coffins to mass produced caskets. By noticing the shapes of the graves, we are knowledgeable of the time periods in the cemetery” (Personal Interview). Another piece of information to know about the scraping is that it is done from north to south.

DiBlasi observed that “the graves were buried from east to west in accordance to Christian tradition because they believed that when the sun rose, they were ready for the coming of God on their judgment day. We scrape north to south because since the graves are buried west to east, it is easier to identify the graves and creates less disruption of them” (Personal Interview).

Personal Photo: The beginning of the fence on Goose Creek Trail
from the first cemetery, but you have know idea it is marking
off a cemetery.

Once the boundaries were found, the information was handed back to the state. The boundaries that DiBlasi and his team discovered are what the state then used to create the fence around the cemeteries to allow hikers and those who visited Tom Sawyer Park acknowledgement of the cemeteries’ existence. This is the same fence that I came across that was falling down, missing pieces of wood in some places, and overall in extremely bad shape. The job that the fence has, to let people know that there is a cemetery, is completely not accomplished when I hopped the fence to find out what was in the field. When I told Mr. DiBlasi about the status of the fence the state built for the cemetery boundaries, he responded like he was unsurprised. “The fact of the matter is that it is very easy for people to forget about things in the society that we live in today. When they forget, everything goes into disrepair” (Personal Interview). He compared the situation to how a dog gets distracted extremely easily from playing with a ball to suddenly seeing a squirrel and wanting to chase after it. In all actuality, it is the state’s responsibility to take care of state property which includes state parks and cemeteries. This was made clear to me when DiBlasi recalled, “Calling in me and building the fence for the cemetery is the state’s way to make sure that they do not break the law that you cannot turn a cemetery into a park” (Personal Interview). The reality that the Central State Hospital land was turned into Tom Sawyer Park and a cemetery was included in the land means that the state was irresponsible towards their duties as written in the law.

Mr. DiBlasi is often asked to comment by journalists and students. This occurred in the Courier Journal article written in June 1997, “Walk in park leads to discovery of forgotten cemetery” by Scott Wade, in reference to the discovery of the cemetery in Tom Sawyer Park by the grandfather and his two grandchildren as mentioned before. Philip DiBlasi was quoted as “it sounds like a comedy of errors. Everything that could have gone wrong did in this case” (Wade). To elaborate on this, DiBlasi states, “the process for a cemetery to become unknown is not necessarily an easy thing to happen. How it got to the state that it became was mistake after mistake” (Personal Interview). At first when I read the quote in the article, I was disturbed how the cemetery could be compared to a comedy, however; now with a further explanation I understand that it is just the amount of things that had to happen for the cemetery to come to its status showing that it is truly remarkable.

Personal Photo: The overgrown tree where there are many hidden 

headstones under it. These headstones are what allowed me to 

know that it was a cemetery. 

I think that since the cemetery is in such bad shape, it needs to be revived and cleaned up. The fences need to be repaired and there should be an acknowledgement that there actually are two cemeteries for the Central State Hospital. Mr. DiBlasi makes it clear that while he was called in to find the boundaries to mark off the cemetery that is where his job ended. He is a state employee and unless the state wants to do something about it, that is not something that he should have to do. This is where I think that awareness is key.

To show that historic cemeteries can in fact be preserved and reverse the cycle of misuse, DiBlasi told the story of a town in Appalachia, KY who had a town cemetery with important historical war heroes from the Civil War. The town came together, raised money, and donated their time to fix up the graves and clean the markers. Now, it is a fully functioning beautiful historic cemetery that is taken care of like it should be. They even made a path through the cemetery to give tours to residents to show the history and educational value that the cemetery provides. This started with DiBlasi who work with them to mark the graves and identify the land. DiBlasi states, “It shows that there are positive changes as a result of my work.” While there are positive changes that can be done, the Central State Cemetery in Tom Sawyer Park is not the only cemetery that needs some help. According to Mr. DiBlasi, some cemeteries that could also use the help in Louisville include, Manslick Pauper Cemetery, Eastern Cemetery, Waverly Hills Cemetery, New City Graveyard, and Old City Graveyard and these five cemeteries are just a few of the many. 

From all of this, it is very clear that historical cemeteries daily are becoming a less known facet in our society today.  Many archaeologists including Philip DiBlasi argue that every day there are cemeteries that are being forgotten whether it is from modern construction or just not being taken care of in the community. Even more so, cemeteries are simply abandoned. Through discovering the forgotten cemetery in Tom Sawyer Park, I have personally witnessed cemeteries being forgotten and have become interested in the subject.

In this paper, I will argue that it is very important for individuals and communities to take care of and restore their cemeteries. Attention needs to be paid to them because cemeteries are a place of reverence and sacred value. Another aspect that they provide is particular information on sickness and family dynamics through tombstones found in historic cemeteries. This is an important issue because it is occurring all across the nation in many communities, especially our own cemeteries in Louisville.  Action needs to be taken to preserve these important sites especially if you have witnessed the abandonment firsthand such as I have, or if your family has been affected because of ancestors who have been buried in these cemeteries.

I will concentrate primarily on the conservation of specific cemeteries in our Louisville community such as the Central State Hospital Cemetery in Tom Sawyer Park and Eastern Cemetery. These specific cemeteries have been exposed to abandonment, misuse, vandalizing, and even mass burial. Thousands of people have been buried in these sites, with many family members not even recognizing that this is occurring to their ancestors. If cemeteries continue to become forgotten and disappear, then we will lose much historical and genealogical information provided by the cemeteries. I suggest that action needs to be taken to preserve the cemeteries and rectify the misuse and abandonment.

Works Cited:
DiBlasi, Philip. Personal interview. 27 June 2011.

Wade, Scott. “Walk in park leads to discovery of forgotten cemetery”. The Courier Journal 4 June 1997. B4: Print.