KEY WEST, Fla. — Photos taken last summer show Clarks Summit native Devon Fogarty helping the National Park Service search an area near Fort Jefferson.
It's located in the Florida Keys, in Dry Tortugas National Park.
The crew was trying to find a former quarantine hospital used by the fort in the 1860s.
While surveying an area, Fogarty says she spotted something they didn't expect to see that day.
"There's no way that's grave. It's too small. It's my size. We have documentation of burials happening out in on a lot of the submerged Keys, but we didn't expect to have something preserved as intact as that grave was," Fogarty said.
The crew had discovered a cemetery.
After carefully cleaning off part of the gravestone, they could see a name and a date, John Greer, who died in November 1861.
"Because the November 5, 1861 date falls right at the cusp of Fort Jefferson's early construction period and the Civil War mobilization period, we figured he was either a prisoner or he was a contractor for the Army Corps of Engineers because he did not have a title," Fogarty said.
After visiting the National Archives in Washington D.C., Fogarty says they were able to learn John Greer was employed as a laborer at the fort and died there.
"It was very exciting to see it and be able to place his name somewhere so that hopefully, down the road, the citizen science part of it can actually fill in those narratives, maybe find living descendants for any of these people. Who were buried out there," said Fogarty.
While only one grave has been identified, historical records show dozens of people, mostly U.S. soldiers stationed at Fort Jefferson, may have been buried there.
Fogarty hopes the discovery of the cemetery brings new interest to Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida for its historical significance.
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