I read a this recent article about the Arlington Cemetery located in the City of Arlington within the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.  The article had to do with re-opening the cemetery for sales of lots after three decades of not selling any new lots.  It reminded me of a situation that we had when I served on the board of our community cemetery in my hometown.

As it turns out in the Arlington Cemetery situation lots have not been able to be sold because the cemetery was, in 1995, declared an abandoned cemetery and taken over by the City of Arlington.   State law did not allow for sales of lots in abandoned cemeteries.  As it turns out the law was changed in 2023 and the cemetery can again start selling new lots.

However, in the Arlington case, the city needs to know which lots are available for sale and who might have claim to other lots.  To complicate this case, many records of the cemetery have been lost between 1995 and now.

The city has given anybody who lays claim to a lot until August 31 to provide proof or it could be sold to somebody else.  According to Sarah Stubblefield, the Strategic Initiatves Manager of the city, “If the family doesn’t have any documentation, we will make our best effort to identify reasonable eveidnce for claims to plots”.

Reclaiming lots — The situation above is somewhat different that the situation we had while I served on the board of the Kinkead Cemetery in Alexandria, Minnesota.  Kinkead Cemetery was founded as a cemetery in Alexandria in 1879.  It is a classic large cemetery with tall trees matured over the last century and a half and large family and individual monuments on the grounds.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

About 75 years ago an adjacent parcel of land was developed that is about the same size as Kinkead Cemetery.  While under the Kinkead Cemetery non-profit ownership it was given the name Sunset Memorial Park and had it’s own rules and regulations.  One of these rules was that only “flat” markers were allowed — no large monuments.  Ease of maintenance was the thought process back then.

Move up to the year 2000 and upright monuments were back in vogue.  So, most families wanted to be in the old Kinkead Cemetery and not the newer, flat-marker only Sunset Memorial Park.  The problem with Kinkead Cemetery was that over the course of 120 years grave space was limited.

In doing a census of the cemetery we found out that what were purchased as lots with 16 grave spaces only had two, three, or four family members actually interred in the plots.  As was common in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s families purchased lots for future graves so a family could be in proximity to one another and they expected children to live in the home community for their entire lives.  As it turns out, many of the children whom these lots were planned for left the community for metropolitan areas and never came back.

Our cemetery census indicated a great number of lots were owned by families for 70-100 years but never used.  The cemetery then went through the legal proceedings to “reclaim” those lots to be sold again.  I remember having to publish our intent, complete with the lot numbers and purchasing owners names, to do so in various newspapers around the county for a various period of time and while we received a few valid claims who wanted to keep the lots, it was not many.

We also did the area a service as some people, when they saw their genealogical relatives names in the paper, now realized that they had the right or claim to lot ownership that they didn’t know of beforehand.

At the end of the day, Kinkead Cemetery reclaimed hundreds of lots that have been, for the last quarter-century or so, available for sale to those in our community who prefer to be buried in that specific cemetery.

I think it just makes sense for older, established cemeteries to take a look at this process to make available inventory that not only would be available to the general public but also available to provide additional income to the cemetery.  If your state has a process for this I think it makes business and community sense.

One of my favorite monuments at Kinkead Cemetery, Alexandria, Minnesota. I had a little fun through the years telling young people that this cemetery was so old that “This guy is buried here!”

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Back almost three years ago in July 2021, Funeral Director Daily brought you this story of how a renewable energy company, Verogy, had put a 7,000 panel solar energy farm inside a cemetery in Torrington, Connecticut.  In essence they took out a 20-year lease on the cemetery property with the energy they harness from the solar power being able to pay the lease payments to the cemetery.

That concept not only was able to bring power generation close to a community that could use it, but it was able to bring revenue to a cemetery that, more than likely, could use it too.  And, it used available space for the solar panels which could be removed following the lease terms, providing additional cemetery space if eventually needed for death care purposes.

Since that time, I think that technology and partnerships have continued to grow.  Here’s a recent (December 2023) article about the same company planning another 17 acre solar farm with the same cemetery group owned and operated by the Catholic Cemeteries Association of the Archdiocese of Hartford.  It’s interesting to note that that 17-acre field would provide the annual power for about 778 “average” homes.

The technology has only gotten better and you can read about municipalities using the open spaces off of airport runways for these types of installations also.  One should note that the closer the solar panels are to the end user of the solar power, the more efficient the situation is.  That fact makes it valuable for these solar farms to be housed in municipal areas and cemeteries are one of the prime areas where land is available in metropolitan areas.

Now, we have learned through this article from Electrek that a community in France is using “solar canopies” to not only collect energy but to also collect rainwater, another valuable use.  And, as you can see by the picture in the article, the canopies do not seem to affect the usage of the cemetery and its operations.  Since, I’m a Minnesotan and we are used to heavy snowfall, I do see potential issues in winter climates. . .although maybe the designers have a solution for that.

In any regard these situations are a development that anybody on the board of a municipal cemetery may want to keep in mind as they wrestle with the revenue issues that have plagued cemeteries during this time of unprecedented cremation choice.

Related — We pass on this archived 2020 press release from our friends at Funeral Director’s Life Company.  The article explains how Funeral Director’s Life, based in Abilene, Texas, switched to 100% solar energy for their corporate offices. . . powered by using a parking lot canopy solar system of 1,300 solar panels.  The press release contains a photo for you to see how this was done.

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