(Graphic/Katherine Davis)
The Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners is making sure every county resident will have a place to be laid to rest.
The commissioners unanimously approved $1,000 in March to buy a 200-square-foot cemetery plot to be used for pauper’s burials. This is the first pauper’s plot purchased by the county.
“We decided that we needed a place for a proper burial,” said Howard Sanders, District 1 Commissioner and former county coroner. “Because everybody needs a proper burial.”
An indigent or pauper’s burial or cremation occurs when a person dies and either their next of kin or their remaining assets can’t cover the cost of a burial or cremation. It can also occur when someone’s remains are not claimed by anybody.
Georgia law requires that every resident who dies has a “decent” interment, but it’s up to the individual counties to decide how to carry this out within minimum state standards.
The idea for the pauper’s plot came from a conversation between Probate Judge Kayla Grier, coroner Jason Lewis and Board of Commissioners Chairman Jay Paul.
“We’ve decided we didn’t really need cremation remains sitting around,” Paul said. “Can’t just leave them sitting on a shelf.”
In Oglethorpe County, if the coroner feels someone needs a pauper’s burial, they will present the case to the Board of Commissioners, which will vote on it. If the board approves, the county will pay for the remains to be cremated.
But up until now, the county didn’t have anywhere to put the remains.
“We just needed to go ahead and make some kind of plan,” Sanders said.
The plot was purchased in Crawford Cemetery in downtown Crawford. When Paul contacted the Crawford clerk, only a few plots were available, so the BOC got one of the last ones.
Granite coping has already been installed, but the grave still needs to be filled with dirt and leveled.
Although the plot itself will be marked, it’s undecided if each person buried there will be given their own small, metal marker. Since all the remains that will be buried in the plot will be cremated, the plot is estimated to allow up to 200 burials, assuming that each urn only takes up 1 square foot.
“That should get us through the next century or so,” Paul said.
Pauper’s burials are rare in Oglethorpe County, there have only been two in the county in at least the last decade, Paul said. The county has both sets of remains, which are waiting to be buried in the plot.
“It’s not something that we’re expecting to deal with very often, but unfortunately, it’s something that had to be dealt with,” Paul said. “Regardless of how infrequent it is or not, we had to have a place.”