TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Last week, remnants of a casket and bone fragments were found near a trail in Tom Brown Park, according to the City of Tallahassee’s Parks and Rec Department.
Officials couldn’t immediately determine the age of the recently discovered remains. The city says there is a small cemetery nearby with headstones dating back to the early 1900s.
Lena Kilpatrick Harris, prior to the news of remains found at the park, did not know where her great-grandfather Reverend J.W. Kilpatrick was buried.
“We have a family cemetery and he’s not, he wasn’t there. So we were always wondering where he was buried at,” Harris said. “I also understand that Mariah, his wife, tombstone is there and his son, Walter, and Walter is my grandfather.”
It’s still being investigated as to whose remains were found, but with Kilpatrick’s tombstone in the same area, Harris would like to see the site maintained.
“We would like for them to reserve this area and if it can be made like a historical area, fenced in, where people cannot go in and destroy whatever is there. That’s the main thing is making sure that their resting place remains diligent,” she said.
Local historian Delaitre Hollinger is working to preserve abandoned cemeteries throughout the state.
“The Reverend J.W. Kilpatrick was certainly a historic figure in Leon County’s history – a pastor of several churches in the area. Founder of Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church. Simply by virtue of the fact that his burial is here makes it a very historic site,” Hollinger said.
Currently, caution tape now re-routes bikers or hikers away from the gravesites and where the remains were found.
But Hollinger would like to see more done.
“The first thing I feel is if that’s been there all this time, why haven’t we done more to investigate and cordon this off,” Hollinger said. “Why haven’t we done more to kind of incorporate this as a part of Tom Brown Park and as part of a site that the public can come and visit and have access to, as opposed to just having them sitting back there beyond the trees.”
After this discovery at Tom Brown, Hollinger said that compelled him to create the Florida Cemetery Preservation Network to help more families in the state who have loved ones buried in abandoned cemeteries.
Florida Department of State Archeologists are investigating the remains along with the state’s medical examiner. WCTV has reached out to the state to learn more about that investigation.
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