I haven't followed this whole discussion, but was interested in the issue of how the cemetery is laid out.  My home town cemtery (Bovina in Delaware County) still orients all the graves with the head west and the feet east, facing the sunrise.  Might be that it was just easier to continue the old pattern....

<snip>
I found that there was
a strict adherence to the rule of orienting the rows to the north and
south.  As the rows were oriented north to south the burials were obviously
perpendicular to this and thus met the oftcited Christian practice of
burial with the head to the west and feet to the east so the dead could
face the rising sun on the day of the resurrection (my priomary question in
this reguard is, what happens if the resurrection occurs on a cloudy day or
in the late afternoon?). Even in the earliest cemeteries (settlement of the
are began in 1793) have the rows of graves oriented to within a few degrees
of north (with the bodies lying with the head to west and the feet to the
east).  I have looked at changes in local magnetic variation hoping to
identify when the cemetery was laid out, but this came to naught.