Frank Washington was making preparations to bury his aunt in a small family cemetery in the historic Virginia community of Thoroughfare when he found a gate barring access to the graveyard.
The town, an hour west of Washington, D.C., dates back to the 1800s, when it was settled by freed slaves and Native Americans. Small burial grounds are scattered throughout the area — some still in use, some forgotten entirely.
The ownership legalities behind many of these plots can be fuzzy, Washington said, but the discovery a few months ago of the gate belonging to a nearby brewery that owns access to the property still came as a shock.