Nine graves confirmed at De Borgia cemetery

Field work conducted by University of Montana students finds nine previously unmarked graves.

In just a short month, the three University of Montana Students – Brennus Voarino, Eric Lavering and Tanja Benadict Karlsen – who spent a day at the De Borgia Cemetery conducting surveys in the hopes of locating previously unmarked graves presented their professor and members of the cemetery board with their findings, which not only confirmed all seven of the suspected unmarked graves but found two the board didn’t know about as well.

In the detailed report, the students stated “they focused on imaging the middle section of the cemetery where the most uncertainties were located” using both DC Resistivity and magnetic surveying equipment in order to acquire the data used to confirm the unmarked graves were there.

“If they had only found one (unmarked grave) it would have been a success,” De Borgia Cemetery Board Member John DuBois said. “That’s the bottom line.”

Even though the student’s surveys were successful in confirming nine unmarked graves the project summary states there is still “a lot of potential” for more work and other tests.

“Only one day was spent on the field acquiring data and as a result this study may only serve as an introduction to the De Borgia cemetery’s subsurface,” the summary states. “The use of ground penetrating radar would be suitable to this study area due to its lack of topography. To improve the study we would suggest running a magnetic survey of the entire cemetery including an area outside the cemetery to compare noise ratios between the outside and inside.”

The summary gives several other ways in which the study could be expanded and improved upon.

“It’s really exciting for an old pioneer cemetery to be explored with 21st century technology,” DuBois said. “It’s cool.”

Ellen Matz, the board member who first contacted the university regarding the project said the results of the initial study will help efforts in improving the cemetery dramatically.

“It gives us more information for sluthing is what it does,” Matz said.

“Either through deductive reasoning or taking the people we know are buried there but don’t know where they are or even trying to contact any remaining relatives depending on how old they are to see who these folks are. Failing that we will just put unknown crosses on the grave so everyone who is in there has a marker.”

Matz said she “feels like” they could put a name to at least one of the unmarked graves confirmed by the project due to her prior research on the cemetery.

“I have four death records for (the last name) Speakerman but we only have three graves,” Matz said of a question area that contains three marked Speakerman graves and one confirmed unmarked grave.

“The rest of them at this point we have no way of knowing who they might be. We are hoping that future research – getting into newspapers and starting to do comparisons with the records we do have – will show us more.”

Another finding of the university students were five instances of marked graves where their equipment did not pick up any readings confirming a body was located there.

“The question is then – is the machine not as accurate as they had hoped or are these just memorials,” Matz said, adding that they have had several examples in recent history of memorials being placed at the cemetery.

For the university students, the project was a rare example of being given a real world assignment - one they all jumped on quickly once it was proposed.

“We were all really interested in it,” Lavering said after the group had concluded its day of field research.

“This is a project that actually matters.”

“A lot of projects in college are just made up for you,” Voarino added. “But this is real.”

For Matz and the rest of the board, the success of the project is the beginning of accomplishing the goal of building a complete record of graves in the cemetery.

“Hopefully we get some more youngsters interested in continuing the project,” Matz said. “We are more than happy to let them use our cemetery as a classroom.”