Remains of Zebulon Pike in Sackets won't be dug up

SACKETS HARBOR — Exhumation of the body buried nearest the memorial for Brig. Gen. Zebulon M. Pike in the village's Military Cemetery seems unlikely after the president of the Pike Family Association met with village and other officials Tuesday.

"From the point of view of the Pike Family Association and of a fourth cousin, it's not necessary," said Roy Escott Pike, president of the group that had expressed interest in exhuming and DNA testing the remains. The association includes about 200 members with the last name Pike or a variation on it, and many have undergone DNA testing to map out their genetic relationships.

"It's not necessary to find him there," Mr. Pike said, gesturing toward the monument commemorating his relative and the other graves clustered around it, "because we know he's here somewhere."

Historical records indicate the general, killed in an 1813 battle of the War of 1812, is buried on the site, but there is uncertainty about where. Formerly buried at Fort Volunteer, now Madison Barracks, in the village, Gen. Pike and others were moved hurriedly to the Military Cemetery in 1909 to make way for an expansion of Madison Barracks, and records from the time are unclear about whether grave markers correspond to burial sites.

Gen. Pike is remembered for his western exploration as well as his military record. He is credited with first documenting Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs, Colo., while on a mission for President Thomas Jefferson to determine the southwestern borders of the Louisiana Purchase.

Mr. Pike, Jenks, Okla., made a two-day stop in the village on his way to his summer residence in Livermore, Maine. He met earlier in the day with Mayor F. Eric Constance and other officials whom Mr. Constance invited. They included Kevin A. Kieff, regional director of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Constance B. Barone, manager of the Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site, and Laurie W. Rush, a military archaeologist based at Fort Drum who conducted a 2003 study of the grave site.

"We couldn't have had a better group," he said. "These were really the people who knew what they were talking about."

Mayor Constance said after the meeting that Mr. Pike "made no movements at all toward trying to exhume the general. He just stated that another faction in the family, Stu Pike (the family association's vice president, Stuart H. Pike, Alamo, Calif.) is more interested in that than he was. He was more there to try to understand some of the history that evolved around the general. It was a good, warm visit."

Mr. Pike said the mayor told him the sentiment on the village Board of Trustees and among most residents he'd heard from had been in favor of leaving the grave site undisturbed. He said Mr. Constance added that he did not want to spend village money on legal and other fees that could be incurred as part of an exhumation project.

Ms. Barone told Mr. Pike she would send him a packet of information on the general from records held in the village this fall.

Ms. Rush gave Mr. Pike a copy of her 2004 report on the results of a study of the grave site using ground-penetrating radar.

The study showed evidence of objects below ground near the monument consistent with historical records describing Gen. Pike's coffin. Based on those results, the report advises against trying to retrieve the remains for DNA testing without "valid research or humanitarian reasons." It leaves open the possibility of "endoscopic exploration" of the site using a "micro-camera."

Mr. Pike said if a documentary project, being pursued by Stuart Pike, ever came to fruition, that might be something the group would want to pursue.

After his meetings in the village, Mr. Pike said he's "less hopeful" about the prospect of DNA testing remains at the grave site, but he understands the reasons behind local officials' hesitance to support such a plan now that he has spoken with them. And, he said, "As a historian, it's a real joy to be here."

He'll include some of the nearly 200 photographs he took in the village and many of the things he learned about the general's final home in an August newsletter to the family association.

And, he said, he believes the village would be a great place to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Gen. Pike's death with a reunion of the family association in 2013. A similar reunion, to commemorate the bicentennial of the general's discovery of Pike's Peak in 2006, drew 140 people, he said.