Interviews with local informants identified an area where the former cemetery was located. The initial GPR survey identified a row of anomalies which were investigated thorough top soil stripping and excavation. This turned out to be 17 child burials and the graves of two adults. Most likely an area of the cemetery used to buried the deceased following a yellow-fever epidemic in the 1800s. The family cemetery was still missing.

Additional testing located fourteen additional graves southeast of the first nineteen graves. These burials were also excavated and determined to be the graves within the Reuben Hartley cemetery. Where possible the age and sex of the person in each burial was determined by Dr. Thomas R. Whyte and Dr. Gwen Robbins, Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University.

GPR anomalies marked during a survey of a field where a cemetery was recorded on an early 19th-century plat.

Grave locations were verified with plow zone stripping prior to moving the cemetery for the construction of a new high school.