A recent discussion amongst friends has come to the conclusion that our local cemeteries have no where near the number of graves to account for the number of people that have lived and died in our area over the last couple of hundred years. Inquiries to friends in other parts of the country produce the same result, not enough graves for those who have left for parts unknown. Therein lies our question ‘where’d all the dead guys go’? Hoping you can put this one to rest.
HeavyD
Madison WI
We need to know your area to know exactly what you are referring to. I have a general idea but I can’t be sure. A lot of the old cemeteries are just gone. They didn’t keep all of them when modern development sprung into being. They leveled some and relocated the bodies or maybe not. Besides that, not everyone was buried in a large cemetery back in the day. Family burial plots were common and the just grew over until people didn’t even know what they were or someone still knows but they are just in the back of some cow pasture somewhere mingled in with everything. I have seen several small cemeteries deep in the woods and completely overgrown. I even found the colonial era cemetery at my in-laws farm in New Hampshire. We always knew that it was somewhere but I was still surprised to find it beneath an early 20th century trash pile later chicken house less than 50 yards from the house.
Not everyone is buried either. Many people are cremated these days and you have the odd missing person that is never found. Also, cemeteries may be able to hold more bodies than you expect. I just did the math and it isn’t exact but you should be able to get several hundred bodies per acre in a conventional cemetery. That is the size of just one nice house lot. Some cemeteries are much bigger than they appear to be from the road and can hold many thousands of people.
I can think of a few things:
Not everyone who dies leaves a body (people donate them to research, get lost at sea, etc).
Not everyone who dies dies in their neck of the woods (If I die in Idaho maybe I’d get buried there).
Not everyone who dies is buried (cremation).
Not everyone who dies is buried in the local cemetery (body may be disposed of in the area but not where you’d think).
Bodies don’t last forever and my understanding is that cemeteries do sometimes recycle burial plots.
I’m sure there are other reasons. Tall gaunt Scottish men accompanied by flying silver orbs are not included 
I did a staff report that touched on these questions a while back: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcemeteryrights.html
Remember too that in older cemetaries several people may be buried in the same plot. On doing geneological research on my family I found seven people buried in one plot - four adults and three children. These were poor Irish immigrants in New York in the 1880s (all were buried in the course of about six years).
Shag, how did you find it? Were the headstones under the trash and chicken house or did you clear all that and start digging a foundation or latrine and find great-grampa’s bones?
Not too far from where I grew up, there was a cemetery that everyone just kinda forgot about. It was used by an insane asylum that closed many years ago. The headstones were small and flush with the ground. Consequently, when the cemetery became overgrown, it looked like a vacant lot. In fact, the cemetery abutted against a large vacant lot, and it was “rediscovered” when someone tried to buy the lot. (The sale never went through, mainly due to trouble over the adjacent abandoned cemetery.) Sadly, the graves were marked only with numbers, and the records appear to have been lost, so no one knows who is buried there.
I volunteered to find it a couple of years before I did. The house was built in the 1700’s and only there had only been two previous owning families. It is a small New England town so there were scattered references to it. The property had fallen into complete disrepair at several points so I didn’t know if it was possible to find it. I looked through the woods and studied the pastures. Nothing. There was a very large old trash pile that had always been there and it was fairly close to the house. I picked through and got lots of things from the early 20th century. Some workers came in to haul some of the garbage off and the next time I visited, I noticed the corner of a large granite stone sticking up. That isn’t unusual for New Hampshire but this one looked man-made. I grabbed a shovel and started digging. It was a large base stone with a deep notch that holds the traditional thin and rather fragile tombstone in place. I guessed where others should be and found two more that same day along with a footstone. Three more have been found sense.
The cemetery isn’t very big which I guess is relevant to the OP. It is only about 30’ x 30’ and surrounded by low stone walls. It is easy to get lost on a property. This cemetery is being restored now and my FIL insists on being buried there. The tombstones were gone but we know who is buried there and likely in which spot just by the location and size of the stones.
About three times a year I get a call from a rural police department somewhere in the large area we serve.
“Backhoe was workin’ on a field for these here new houses and some bones came up.”
Poor cop has to leave work and drive allll the way out here with the bones for me to take a look at.
Oddly enough the commonest response the cop gets when he/she arrives is “Not human”. Lots of barbecue parties appear to occur in the woods and fields leaving large portions of ox bones. I’m no kind of animal bone expert but I can tell lots of times when it’s not human.
Second commonest response is “Extremely old bone, of no forensic interest.” By “extremely old” we mean “more than seventy years”. Which is to say, even if the owner was murdered, they’d be dead by now anyway. And their assailant if any would be dead too, and we know the maxim at law that “the offense of homicide is exculpated by the death of the offender”.
Every now and then it’s “WOWZER! Uh-oh! Get the crime scene tape out!”
Meant to say - Bones over 70 years are crumbling. Roots are growing through them. Little bits are tumbling off. Bones unless fossilized aren’t permanent. Ye are dust and to dust ye shall return. If there are no unusual conditions to keep you around, in an ordinary grave, you’re definitely gone by two hundred years or so. Your clothes are gone, too, rotted and insect-consumed. Then, if the backhoe chews through your resting place, there’s no sign you were ever there, except maybe your metal belt buckle.