BRIAR VALE, West Virginia — Briar County has transferred an unclaimed man's burial from a settling section of Laurel Fork Cemetery after crews found that the excavated grave would not remain open. The remains were reinterred Tuesday on higher ground, and the county says no other plots are being moved.
The county commission approved the transfer in September when a stone retaining wall below the northeast slope began leaning toward Laurel Fork Road. The grave was recorded in 1987 as that of Amos Rell, 61, who died at the county infirmary and had no relative listed on his burial authorization. A flat concrete marker had shifted nearly eight inches downhill since spring.
Cemetery workers opened the plot Monday under the supervision of funeral director Hester Pell and county surveyor Noah Crain. At a depth of about five feet, they exposed the top of a sealed metal burial container in clay that Crain described as firm and ordinary for the slope. The removed earth was placed on a numbered ground cloth and covered against rain.
When the crew paused to position lifting straps, clay began rising against the container's sides. Pell said it did not fall from the walls or wash in from the surface. The level came up evenly from below, first covering the lower straps and then pressing against the container lid. Workers cleared it with hand shovels twice before lifting the container free.
The container was intact, and the transfer proceeded without opening it. Crain said the empty excavation filled to within 14 inches of grade during the 37 minutes required to move the container to a waiting vault. The fill lay in hard horizontal layers rather than loose spoil. Survey stakes at the four corners did not move, and the surrounding ground showed no cracking or loss of volume.
All of the soil removed that morning remained on the covered cloth. County road foreman Len Wick weighed the covered load on the cemetery's small truck before and after the transfer because it was scheduled for use behind the retaining wall. The load differed by less than the scale's 20-pound interval. Wick said crews did not bring fill onto the site.
The county halted work long enough to check the cemetery map and burial permit. Both place Rell in the opened plot. A brass plate on the container carried his name and the same 1987 funeral-home number preserved in the commission's payment ledger. Pell said those records were sufficient to establish that the county had removed the burial it intended to move.
Commission president Alma Sorrell said the event does not change the county's obligation to maintain the grave. Rell's new plot lies beside a gravel lane in the cemetery's upper section and now carries the original marker, reset on a new base. A minister from the church that maintains the grounds read the same brief committal used for other county burials.
Two residents attended after seeing the excavator. Briar Vale resident Nita Cole said her mother had served meals at the infirmary and remembered Rell as a quiet man who repaired chair caning. Cole placed a bundle of split oak beside the new marker. She said she had not known where he was buried before the transfer notice appeared in the commission minutes.
The old plot was leveled without using the covered spoil. By late afternoon, its surface stood flush with the surrounding sod line and resisted a probe to the depth Crain could reach. The county spread grass seed there but left the corner stakes in place for a 30-day survey. The removed soil was trucked to a locked maintenance yard pending a decision on the retaining wall.
On Wednesday morning, cemetery caretaker Orin Bale found a narrow depression at the center of the former grave. It was the length and width of the concrete marker now installed uphill, with square corners and a smooth bottom less than an inch deep. Fallen leaves crossed the surrounding plot. None lay inside the depression, and Bale said he would not fill it until the survey is complete.