(adapted from a pamphlet written by Frances Broaddus-Crutchfield in the style of a children's story)
Sybil is a skeleton. She was a person who died in the 1700s. She was buried in a cloth bag with no fastenings. When we found her, she had been underground so long that her backbone was one with her sternum.
We uncovered Sybil accidentally. My husband was grading the bank for a boat landing on the Pamunkey River. When our dog found what appeared to be a human bone, he stopped to investigate, and discovered Sybil. He, his cousins and I used tiny brushes to sweep the earth from Sybil's bones. We were careful not to move her. We covered her with clear plastic until archaeologists had studied her. Then we buried her and left her in peace.
Sybil was uncovered in 1975.
While Sybil would rest in peace for the next twenty years, the time would not be as tranquil for us. My husband died in a car accident. Our five-month-old son grew into a man. We would battle inheritance taxes, poachers, an ultralight airport, a county reservoir and a sewage treatment plant.
Often we talked about Sybil and imagined that the ghosts of her people were still roaming the land. We heard wooden oars scraping the sides of boats of yesteryear...saw ships bringing wine and silk thread from India...met Patrick Henry visiting his brother at Newcastle...observed Edmund Ruffin conducting scientific soil experiments...
We dreamed of the forests and farm land we would save for archaeological digs and wildlife preserves.
Little did we know that these dreams would be threatened more than we could have imagined. As the world's population increased, issues relating to conservation and environment seemed to multiply throughout the United States. Supplies of open land and clean water decreased.
In Virginia, in the neighboring county of King William, the Mattaponi Indians would fight to save their land from a reservoir project that would harm fishing, flood sacred sites and graves and destroy forest and wetlands. Also, a farmer in nearby EssexCounty would receive a letter saying the city of Newport News might take his property.
The city of Harcourt, Iowa would want to seize land owned by Dave and Kristi Castenson.
On the west coast, a woman, Julia Butterfly Hill, would live for two years atop a giant redwood tree named Luna to prevent the pillaging of California forest land by a lumber company.
Although Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, DC, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Chesapeake Bay Commissionwould be the six members of the Bay Program Partnership to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, the Governor and administration of Virginia would be less dedicated to saving its forests and farm land. The rivers flowing to the Bay would be declared impaired. One of these was the tidal Pamunkey River, a border of our farm.
Hanover County officials decided that they wanted to construct a sewage treatment plant and use our farm for sewage outfall. The county proposed to run sewer pipes less than 200 yards from Sybil's grave.
