Finding Unmarked Graves at PVAMU

Finding Unmarked Graves at PVAMU

On March 12 and 13, 2024, Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc. invited ground penetrating radar specialists Dr. Chet Walker and Aundrea Thompson to visit the campus of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and conduct several geophysical examinations of the historic burial ground of Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery.

This project is funded through the Summerlee Foundation.

Aundrea Thompson, Dr. Chet Walker, and Dr. DeWayne Moore

Aundrea Thompson & Dr. Chet Walker met with project director and PVAMU Assistant Professor of History DeWayne Moore to learn more about the grant from the Summerlee Foundation.

Student Engagement

Dr. Moore’s son, Noah, surveys the cemetery with students workers on the Digital PV Panther Project–Noah Jackson, Zynitra Durham, and Jaylynn Brantley

The archaeologists

In the spring of 2006, Dr. Walker founded Archaeo-Geophysical Associates, LLC, an archaeological consulting firm specializing in geophysical prospection. Since that time, he has collected geophysical data on over 150 archaeological sites, now totaling much more than 1,539 Acres of Gradiometer, 115 Acres of Ground-Penetrating Radar, and 484 Acres of Electromagnetic Induction Meter.

Aundrea Thompson studied at the University of Wyoming, and she has worked as a forensic archaeologist on numerous projects in the past ten years. For more on one project, in which she located the remains of a World War II soldier and brought his remains back to the US for burial, please click HERE

Aundrea Thompson's Graduate Work

Hauling their geophysical prospection equipment in a large pick-up truck from Palestine, Texas, where they had been working at another archaeological site, Aundrea and Chet planned to spend two days on campus before driving to Magnolia, Texas to collaborate with the Houston Archaeological Society on a dig site.

At PVAMU, Chet and Aundrea planned to run the ground-penetrating radar over the entire five acre field to determine the size of the burial ground. In addition, they intended to scan the field with an electromagnetic induction meter as well as LIDAR [or Light Detection and Ranging], which is attached to a large drone and scans an estimated 120 acre area.

Chet Walker Locates Remains in Alabama

Ground Penetrating Radar

In this image, you can see how running the GPR looks on the grass. Making an imprint similar to that of a lawn mower, Chet and Aundrea covered the entire field, hoping to determine the size of the burial ground.

Scanning the Entire Field

By scanning the entire field, the teams intends to use the data from GPR to corroborate data obtained during the pedestrian survey in October 2023. We hope to determine the locations of graves and the size of the burial ground.

The cemetery

The burial ground is associated with and named after an African American church founded in the 1890s by Reverend George W. Wyatt, a one-time school teacher and politician who represented Waller and Fort Bend Counties in the state legislature in the 1880s. Based on slave schedules, Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery might contain hundreds of graves of enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, and their descendants. It sits on the former slave labor plantation of Jared E. Kirby, who, in 1860, owned more enslaved people (159) than any other planter in Austin County. No one made a formal record of these burials, however, and the historic burial ground, which is located behind University Village Phase III, was over time abandoned, especially after 1961, with the establishment of nearby Prairie View Memorial Gardens. Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery contains only a handful of marked graves, but it holds forever close the remains of three United States military veterans.

THE WYATT CHAPEL CEMETERY PROJECT

Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)

LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth.

Drone with LIDAR

Chet and Aundrea have several drones that can carry up to 22 pounds of equipment.

Pre-Set Navigation

With pre-set navigational controls, the drone flies back and forth in straight lines, capturing data about the contours of the earth over a 120 square mile area.

Chet and Aundrea completed the data collection using ground penetrating radar for the entire five acre field, and they obtained LIDAR data using the drone, but they plan to return later in March 2024 to complete data collection with the magnetometer. Once all the data is collected, they will analyze their findings independently and objectively, and they will submit their findings to Dr. Nesta Anderson, of Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc., who will meet with Dr. Moore and Pamela Morgan, of the Wyatt Chapel Descendants Committee, to compare the results to the findings from the pedestrian survey.