Legal Tangles Grow from Hidden Cemetery

When Mike Bauer purchased 96 acres near Longview Lake at the junction of Raytown and Highgrove roads, he was unaware of the "35-by-60-foot plot that sat smack in the middle of his potential paradise" that was a graveyard. The city required him to either move the bodies or build a paved access road to them. A Strode family member had taken out a separate deed on the graveyard in the 1850s. The majority of the graves are of Strode family members, but "family lore also tells of slaves and possibly others," including three or four Civil War soldiers. Bauer, has agreed, with family members' permissions, to move the bodies.