Appoquinimink Meetinghouse
Odessa, Delaware
Appoquinimink Friends Burial Ground
We know there are burials here that don't have the traditional Quaker markers, but only rough stones. Other graves could be unmarked (perhaps the stones sank into the ground). And we have several areas where we suspect Corbit ancestors were buried before the Corbit Graveyard was established around 1900. In the fall of 2023, we were visited by two groups who helped us identify places where there's no marker for someone.
Talented canines from Chesapeake Search Dogs, able to find people or bodies, came to the cemetery to find what we suspect are unmarked graves. This is part of their ongoing training.
Chesapeake Search Dogs
The dogs have amazing
noses that can detect
very old burials
Plain stone marker used by early Quakers
Only one inscribed marker is a mystery: as best we can tell, it says Ardel **mer[?], a child.
Unknown burials aren't that rare. Nearby:
Duck Creek Friends, in Smyrna, a very early Delaware Quaker Meeting.
Asbury Cemetery, north of Odessa, associated with the Methodist Asbury Chapel and later, Zoar Methodist Church.
Ground Penetrating Radar was provided by
Dr. Heather Wholey's class at West Chester University.
Her team set up a grid over the blank areas and systematically scanned underground looking for features that are known to show up as possible graves. They visited twice and thoroughly gathered data.
The data from the radar is processed by computer to give a map of subsurface features.
