There may be more than bones buried in Highland Cemetery.
At the turn of the 20th century, grave robbing was common, as local medical schools thirsted for bodies to dissect, according to David Heighway.
Gangs roved the cemeteries hoping to unearth a human body’s weight in money. So much that shoot-outs occurred on cemetery grounds, noted in the Mar. 22, 1903 issue of The Sunday Sentinel.
The winning gang could have walked away with an extra body, Heighway said.
Because of these gangs, something different was buried with a descendant of Salathiel Fisher, the town’s namesake.
Hampton West, an infamous grave robber, was guilty of robbing the grave of Newton Bracken at the Beaver Cemetery the same day Velmer Bell Fisher, one of Salathiel’s granddaughter, died at age 5 – July 16, 1905.
Her father, Watson Fisher, would not abide a man like West unearthing the remains of his daughter.
Folklore tells that beneath the feet of those who visit Velmer’s grave is dynamite put in place to give robbers a nasty surprise.
Heighway said it is unlikely that dynamite was buried with Velmer by Watson. However, nitro glycerin was a likely substitute.
During the time period of Velmer’s death, local companies used tubes of nitro-glycerin to crack limestone and construct natural gas wells, Heighway said. Sometimes these companies employed as much as 10 to 12 quarts of the combustible compound.
Heighway said it’s likely that Watson buried tins of the explosive in Velmer’s grave. If any robber was brave enough to dig into the grave, a single shovel strike could set off one of the tins.
More than 100 years later, if Watson really did burry nitroglycerin, the explosive is no longer a threat to visitors at the cemetery.
Heighway said the tins are most likely rusted away, and the nitroglycerin dissipated.
There’s a level of here-say to the tale, but due to the surrounding circumstances – the conviction of a high profile grave-robber, the family’s grief and the availability of such explosives – it looks like Watson and the Fisher family took extreme precaution.
“I’d say it’s extremely possible that something like that was done,” Heighway said.
