The bones used to be buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery south of town. Heavy rains in 2009 washed away the wall of a neighboring ravine, and a strip of the oldest part of the cemetery slid into the maw. Several headstones and at least one body tumbled down with the soil.

Someone retrieved several gravestones from the ravine and set them at the back edge of the cemetery. Some of them indicate the graves were nearly old enough to fall under the state archaeologist’s authority. One, for a 2-year-old girl named Nellie Beem, says she was buried in 1867, which is 144 years ago.

How hard is it just to dig some new graves and put these people back to rest?