SASKATOON -- In 2018, the Shiloh Baptist church near Maidstone became a provincial heritage site, largely because of the efforts of Leander Lane.

“I had a special interest in Shiloh cemetery because my great-grandfather was the first person to be buried in the cemetery,” he said.

The church was the centre of a community settled by African American farmers who fled racial segregation in the United States, including Julius Caesar Lane, in 1909.

Lane, who founded the Shiloh Baptist Church & Cemetery Restoration Society, is in the process of writing a book about the people who first settled there and the history of community.

He plans to call it The Road to Shiloh.

As he was writing the chapter on the cemetery in October, a new discovery was made.

“Normally I wouldn't be too excited about revising the whole chapter, but in this case I didn’t have a problem,” he said.

Lane was contacted by Mike Markowski, who co-owns Atlheritage Services, a consulting company which specializes in archaeology and the mapping of cemeteries using ground penetrating radar.

“You're detecting the grave shaft from the disturbed soil that was used to excavate the grave,” said Markowski. “The GPR sends radio waves down, so once it hits a solid object such as a coffin, it bounces back.”

Lane says the oral history behind the cemetery points to there being up to 50 grave sites, but burial registries, headstones, and grave markers were lost over the years and only 38 graves were accounted for. Together Lane and Markowski set out to map the cemetery and discover unmarked graves.

“We just didn't know for sure where they might be, so that kind of mapping out the cemetery and finding them really added to the story,” said Lane.

They were able to find five unmarked graves.

“There's potential for more yet, we just surveyed a portion of the cemetery,” said Markowski.

“It adds some finality to the question of how many people were buried in Shiloh cemetery,” said Lane, who added they might never know exactly how many settlers were buried there.

Lane says the discovery adds to the story of the plight of the people who lived there.

“I'm really proud,” he said. “The people in those graves, their stories have never been told, and they they came to Saskatchewan hoping to find a better life.”

“It's (because of) the guys like him that these little parts of Saskatchewan history are being protected and preserved,” said Markowski. “This is kind of adding little pieces to the puzzle.”

Lane says he hopes to publish his book in early 2022.