By Carol Vaughn
Staff Writer
TANGIER ISLAND — A couple out for a ride Wednesday afternoon found a skull and other human bones in a cardboard box lying behind the town trash receptacles on the northern end of this Chesapeake Bay island.
The skeletal remains appear to be old and officials speculate they could have washed ashore from a cemetery on Uppards, a small uninhabited island just north of Tangier.
“It was not intact. The skull was there; there were definitely arms and ribs,” said Mayor James Eskridge, who was called to the scene. He informed Tangier police officer John Charnock and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission about the discovery.
“It was not an everyday thing,” he said of the grisly find.
Accomack County Sheriff Larry Giddens said Thursday morning he is sending an investigator to the island to examine the scene. Giddens said the remains will be taken to a forensic laboratory in Norfolk for further investigation.
Eskridge is curious about who gathered the bones and put them into the cardboard box, as well as why they would leave the remains behind the trash dump.
“They were definitely placed there,” he said, adding, “What the story is, I don’t know.”
The bones could have washed ashore on Tangier’s northern point after a grave on Uppards fell into the Chesapeake Bay, he said. The Uppards cemetery holds the remains of four families that once lived on the island. Graves there date from the 1800s to about 1930, Eskridge said.
Summertime visitors to Uppards in recent years have reported seeing human bones as they walked along the shoreline there, he said.
“I actually know one of the graves up there was an Eskridge...It was getting ready to go in the water,” Eskridge said. He had those remains reburied on Port Isobel, next to Tangier, because the deceased person likely was his relative.
This story should make a good conversation among the locals. If these bones are drifting from the island nearby isn't it time the state of Virginia does something about it? |
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