Slowly, but surely, Chesapeake Bay water levels are rising, apparently accelerated by climate change. As the bay eats away at tracts of land on Hooper’s Island and other low-lying areas, it is engulfing a number of old gravesites.

To the outrage and sorrow of historians and surviving relatives, the rising water is evicting the dead, leaving bones and coffin handles as flotsam. Graveyards were built close to the shore, because that is where settlers lived. Other cemeteries started out farther inland, in churchyards or farm plots, but erosion has eaten away the land and brought the waterfront to them.

Read (WTOP)