Preliminary ground-penetrating radar results have identified as many as 742 graves beneath the grounds of a Department of Public Utilities substation that features a controversial Confederate marker that underwent a costly renovation years earlier, according to a draft survey report.

City officials confirmed the survey detected “472 probable and 270 possible” graves at the site on Wise Street.

The marker’s inscription says it was placed in 1939 by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor 100 South Carolina Confederate soldiers who reportedly died in a temporary hospital across the street from the substation’s location.

Related research to the survey, according to City officials, suggests the site was established in 1857 by the City of Manchester and later used for military burials from 1861 to 1862, with onsite burials predating the creation of Maury Cemetery in 1874.

In 2023, over $16,000 in improvements were made around the marker, from new fencing to a bench. City officials said, after questions were raised over the decision, that improvements were made in response to a resident looking to honor their ancestor. 

Mike Sarahan, a former City Attorney’s Office employee who has criticised the marker and other Confederate memorials in Richmond, challenged that explanation with research that identified the person who made the request, their ancestor and their service record.

The initial results of the survey cast further doubt on the ancestor’s presence among the graves, as City officials stated in emails that “unfortunately, records of the individuals buried at the site do not exist.” According to Sarahan, the person who requested the improvements has since said they’d prefer the remains moved from the DPU substation to a cemetery.

The full report is expected to be released “in the coming days,” City sources said, and an access plan for the site is in the works.

“I wish people had listened to [them] three years ago,” Sarahan said in an email to the Richmond Free Press on the survey’s results. “I wouldn’t have had to spend the last two years raising objections to the showcasing of the marker in such an inappropriate manner.”