On the morning of February 27, John Upchurch arrived at his 58-acre plot at 3104 Carpenter Pond Rd. He inherited the land after his mother died in 2017. For more than 40 years, Upchurch had known about two graves on the property.
By 5 p.m., he would uncover 20 more.
Large cedar trees loomed over the land, a tell-tale sign there was a cemetery nearby. The ground was soft for Steve Ward and his cemetery services team thanks to an unusually wet Durham winter. That morning, Ward’s team reached the land before Upchurch, already probing the earth to begin disinterment. The gravedigger was nicely dressed in a collared button-up. He could’ve been going out to dinner.
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