<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of USA Today at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/09/mississippi-medical-school-graves-found/5320995/">http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/09/mississippi-medical-school-graves-found/5320995/</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; line-height: 34px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; line-height: 34px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><b>Graves' discovery affects Miss. medical school's plans</b></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; line-height: 27px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; line-height: 27px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">1,000 bodies may have been asylum patients; more might be revealed on campus.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">JACKSON, Miss. — Future progress for the state's longtime medical school has collided with the ghosts of Mississippi's past — the discovery of a 1,000 bodies buried on its campus and the likelihood of more.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Officials of the fast-growing University of Mississippi Medical Center had planned to build a parking garage east of the dental school, where a grove of trees now sits.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But testing in the area revealed 1,000 bodies, believed to have been patients at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum a century ago.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"None have names," said Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical school.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Paying for reburials elsewhere would cost about $3,000 a piece, or $3 million total, he said. "We can't afford that."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">New plans include building the parking garage next to the dental school, he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Others plans may have to change, too. Medical center officials had hoped to use the property west of the dental school for future expansion, but Keeton said they might have to rethink that approach, because other bodies may lie beneath the earth — former slaves, TB victims and possibly even Civil War dead.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The UMMC ground on which Keeton and Gov. Phil Bryant recently stood to announce construction of the $11 million American Cancer Society Hope Lodge is believed to contain yet more bodies.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For that reason, UMMC officials said both the lodge and a new Children's Justice Center would likely have to be relocated on the 164-acre campus, where both space and parking seem to be growing scarce.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The State Lunatic Asylum opened on the site in 1855, housing 150 patients.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Eight years later, the Union's 46th Indiana Infantry Regiment arrived at the asylum. One soldier wrote that the patients "were terribly excited and were seen at the windows shouting to the soldiers."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Readying for the siege of Jackson, the soldiers set up camp, built fortifications and grew vegetables to sustain themselves, said Jim Woodrick, director of the Historic Preservation Division of the state Department of Archives and History.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">During the ensuing battle, Confederate soldiers fired back and hit the asylum, injuring at least one patient, he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By the time the Union Army left, one soldier penned that Jackson is a "ruined town," he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">After the Civil War ended, the mental facility expanded to house 300 patients, and the area became known as "Asylum Hill," a neighborhood that included houses, a school and a church for former slaves, Cade Chapel M.B. Church.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The area eventually saw construction of a fertilizer factory, a Baptist orphanage and a sanatorium for those suffering from tuberculosis</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The hill had several cemeteries: one for asylum patients, one for M.B. church members and one for paupers. Some have suggested there may be Civil War graves there, too.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 1935, Mississippi moved the asylum to its present location at Whitfield.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Two decades later, construction started on the University Medical Center, and officials dubbed the area "Education Hill."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It didn't stick.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dr. Luke Lampton, chairman of the state Board of Health, said his father, who taught at UMMC for four decades, told him every time the institution broke ground, they found more caskets.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There are probably thousands more bodies that we've never seen," said Lampton, who has researched and written about the days of the asylum.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By 1926, the patient population had swelled to 2,000, and the patients grew their own crops, Lampton said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 1990,</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span><i>The Clarion-Ledger</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">reported about 20 tombstones had been discarded in a gully behind UMC.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">After the article appeared, archives officials warned UMC that hundreds of bodies might be buried there, saying, "This site is a potential Mississippi Landmark and may be adversely affected by any development on it."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A UMMC official responded: "Should any development occur in the future in that area, I know the information you sent will be helpful."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A few years later, workers found 44 unmarked graves while putting in a steam line for a new laundry.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">During 2012 construction on the crossing of East University Drive and University Drive on campus, workers discovered the first of 66 pine coffins that held bodies, leading UMMC to contact state archives and Mississippi State University.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Medical center officials announced plans to rebury those in a small cemetery there.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But that option isn't possible with the discovery of 1,000 bodies, Keeton said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Biological anthropologist Nicholas Herrmann, an associate professor at MSU, said through recent testing, they've been able to get a good idea of the location of the asylum graves.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What is less certain, he said, is where other cemeteries might have been.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In most cases, anthropologists have been able to determine gender and approximate age.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mable Daniels is hoping such information might help to confirm her great-grandmother, Epsie Seals, was indeed buried there. "It would be closer than what we know right now," said Daniels, whose great-grandmother died at the asylum on Valentine's Day in 1916 after "14 days of paralysis."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Woodrick said the crescent-shaped earthworks on the UMMC campus are part of the only two military fortifications left from the 1863 siege The other is in Battlefield Park, marked by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, he said. "They identified them as Confederate trenches. They are actually Union trenches. They also put cannons there that are actually Spanish-American War guns, and they're pointed the wrong way. Other than that, they got everything right."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If a bulldozer ever tries to disturb the earthworks on old Asylum Hill, Woodrick vows to do all he can to halt it. "I'll go down," he said, "and lay in the road."</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><div id="module-position-M90rQU6qFAE" class="story-asset inline-share-tools-asset"></div></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------<br><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There's room at the top they are telling you still.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- John Lennon</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>