Kellybrook Elementary School waits for Cemetery to be Relocated

Article from The Kansas City Star
By JOHN SHULTZ

Mercer Bush fought in the War of 1812, took a pioneer’s trail to Missouri, and — better than 100 years after his death — brought bulldozers to a halt in Liberty.

This week, a team of archaeologists is undertaking the painstaking, by-hand work of moving Bush and 11 members of his family and slaves from ground tabbed for the construction of the Liberty School District’s 10th elementary school, at 108th Street and North Eastern Avenue in Kansas City.

With the district footing the bill for the grave relocation and for a new, memorial-rich burial site about 100 feet from the original graveyard, Bush’s distant descendants couldn’t be happier with the move. It wasn’t that long ago, relatively speaking, that the family’s homestead and cemetery were to give way to a never-realized landfill.

“This is much, much better for the family,” said Gary Bush, Mercer Bush’s great-great-great-great grandson. “We are very grateful the school district has decided to do this.

“These were highly respected people, very good people,” he said. “Mercer arrived in Clay County in 1835. This is where he raised his family, and where he lost his family” with his death in the 1880s.

The district, meanwhile, also is pleased with the turn of events. Last week, a Clay County judge gave it permission to move the cemetery. And Kellybrook Elementary couldn’t have been built without moving the graves, said district spokeswoman Eileen Houston-Stewart.

The burial site sits in the path of a key driveway for the school. Engineering the development around the graves would have meant adding a significant retaining wall to the project, a feature the district considered a safety hazard for schoolchildren, Houston-Stewart said.

Kellybrook is being built on about 16 acres donated to the district by developer Tim Harris. Houston-Stewart said neither the developer nor the district knew about the graves until after the transaction, when engineers discovered a few headstones under a shade tree while walking the land. The cost of the move has yet to be determined.

Gary Bush isn’t entirely certain how many graves are on the site, nor who is buried in them.
The family only learned of the graveyard’s existence after the landfill was proposed for the site. He said when he was alerted by the Clay County Historical Society that the school was going in, he expected there to be about a half-dozen graves on site.

But the archaeologists from the Environmental Research Center found evidence of 12 grave shafts on the land.

Two belong to Mercer and Perlina Bush; of that, the family is certain.

Based on the size of the graves, two more belong to other adults, said archaeologist Chris Hansman. One belongs to an infant, and seven others are likely children.

The dead were buried in six-cornered wooden coffins in the area’s naturally highly acidic soil. Factor in the age, and there’s little in the way of remains to be discovered.

“With the adults you may get some bone fragments,” Hansman said. “With the children, you’ll find buttons and coffin nails.”

Hansman expects the project to be wrapped up by Friday.

All that was left in one girl’s grave excavated early Wednesday was 10 glass buttons. Those buttons will be moved to the memorial site.

But the departed now can provide a palpable touch of the county’s past for anyone visiting the memorial.

“This will be a valuable history lesson for the kids who go here,” Houston-Stewart said.