Area in Green Bay where Veterans 1st of NEW plans to build a veterans' village. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Brown County shared the results of its land survey of a poor farm cemetery on an empty lot on Green Bay’s east side.
Veterans 1st of NEW is looking to build 21 small homes on 3.46 acres of the land near the Green Bay VA Clinic.
One of the concerns of neighbors was the disturbing of unmarked burial sites.
County Executive Troy Streckenbach, along with UW-Oshkosh Anthropologist, Jordan Karsten, detailed more about the targeted GPR survey of a nearby poor farm cemetery.
“We want to be able to close this chapter, delineate the space and appropriately as a county to recognize it and post it and have some type of signage that will recognize this space,” Streckenbach said.
Karsten said he found 15 to 20 graves in an area that’s associated with the cemetery. Those buried in the cemetery likely were patients of the former mental institution or those working on the nearby poor farm.
“Some of the disturbances in the earth, it’s hard to know 100% if they are graves, some others are a lot easier to tell that that’s the case,” Karsten said. “From here, what we can do is take that information, give it to the state of Wisconsin Historical Society and they can make sure that it’s appropriately classified and protected in terms of property.”
About 200 yards away from the potential graves, Karsten said he also found a lot of buried construction debris from when the Brown County Mental Health Hospital was razed.
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