Mapping Heritage: Using Ground Penetrating Radar to Rediscover Revolutionary War Heroin Margaret Corbin’s Resting Place

This study employs noninvasive Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) sensors in the form of the LMX200 system with a 250 MHz ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna to identify the potential interment site of Margaret Corbin or CPT Molly. Corbin was a Revolutionary War heroine who spent her final years following the war living in the Village of Highland Falls, NY. After learning the remains previously interred at the United States Military Academy Cemetery at West Point in 1926 were not the remains of Margaret Corbin, but in fact an unknown male, we felt compelled to rediscover Corbin’s true interment site. After reviewing two volumes of 1926 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) firsthand accounts and research from the United States Military Academy Library Archives, we identified a potential research area on a land parcel previously owned by J.P. Morgan. Using the LMX200, three sites were explored with a total of six-line scans covering approximately 600ft. The EKKO_Project v6 software was used to process the collected data with a combination of default and manual program settings to further interpret the data. Thus, allowing us to identify several structural anomalies that are consistent in depth with historical burial sites especially when taking nearly 225 years’ worth of erosion, flooding, and land use changes into account. However, to more conclusively confirm our results further testing of the site must be completed in the form of soil sampling to test for organic matter, an Electromagnetic survey and/or a resistivity survey to further corroborate our GPR findings.