Slabtown got its name from a sawmill that operated on the west bank of Wolf Creek back in the late 19th Century. A gristmill operated across the creek on the east side, but the seemingly endless slabs of wood on the west gave this section of town its name. It included a ford further up the creek where people could walk across or go on horseback.
Our research on the final resting place of the Dunkerley's ended with a stab in the dark phone call to a man who hed the cemetery records for an older but well maintained grave yard above the ford and on the west bank of the creek. They had no gravemarker, but the were on the plot map. Mystery solved, time to move on.
No. The Coal Pile Cemetery would not leave my mind. The gentleman who submitted the article to the newspaper back in the sixties said that he spoke to mineworkers who worked the Hallville switch and they said that they remembered seeing stones there. Years after the hallville mine was closed, the tipple was moved to another location and the ground was strip mined by another company. The only part of the property not stripped is around where the tipple stood. Did they know what was there?
All that I know is a cemetery under a pile of coal scrap did not seem right to me. I figured that the easiest way to prove that the cemetery was there was to find the fence with a metal detector and then work my way in until I found a stone.
And if I did find something, who do I tell? Would anyone care? The few people who I discussed what I was doing with thought that I was a bit touched. This is not unusual.
I bought a Garrett Ace 250 that March.
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