MARTINDALE, Texas (KXAN) – To Cindy Woolley, the ground radar machine looked like a lawnmower. She watched as the surveyor pushed it across the weedy, uneven ground of Crayton-Spruill Cemetery. Each time the machine revealed a set of buried human bones, the operator marked it, pushing a little pink flag into the ground.

In all, the 2023 radar survey revealed 29 graves. Many of them likely the final resting places of people enslaved by one of the area’s original landowners, John Crayton, and his family, according to Woolley and court records. They were buried up to 150 years ago. Woolley, a descendant of Crayton, and her family commissioned the survey to get a better understanding of what lies beneath the historic plot of land.

The slaves’ graves are unmarked because, according to local l

See Full Page