

At one point, Alabama listed Old Prewitt as one of the state's most endangered places. By that time, the burial yard was disappearing as trees and scrub brush took over. So, that’s what I remember.”Īs an adult, Kemp did some research and she thinks some of her ancestors are buried at the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. Then, he’d drive to a place and he’d tell us what it is, or who they were. “I was probably…maybe I want to say six or seven. “My father drove us there,” said Patricia Kemp. This isn’t just an issue involving the dead. Nowhere close to the number of graves Strozier found. There’s a handful of tombstones and plain burial markers at Old Prewitt. I’ve seen forty burials out here,” said Strozier. The one unmarked grave Strozier found was just for starter. It was set up in the 1820’s by John Welch Prewitt, a local plantation owner. APR news invited him to scan this two acre spot near Tuscaloosa.

Strozier runs Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia. If it’s not embalmed, or protected with a vault, it all breaks down, It degrades…decomposes-including the wooden casket,” he observed. “Right now, I see an air pocket where a body was buried in the ground. That’s a casketed burial,” said Strozier after working less than a minute. “Just walking around, and there’s one right there. That’s about thirty percent of what he does. He uses his equipment to scan for things like buried water pipes that are leaking. It’s just a matter of putting it together,” quips Strozier. This is two GPS machines,” said Strozier.Ī radar antenna that looks for airplanes typically points up. “Alright, this is ground penetrating radar machine. It has big black wheels, a box on top with buttons and a small view screen. The scissoring refers to a collapsible rig about the size of a grocery store shopping cart. “It all scissors out like that,” he said. The ground penetrating radar equipment from Omega Mapping Services, at the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery in Northport
