Digging Up History Page 11

  I proceeded to outline what I’d found the day before, ending with my bewilderment that some of the burials had been moved, apparently publicly, but a lot more had not. While I talked, Marty had pulled out a modern map of Philadelphia and laid it in the center of the table between us.

  “Let me get this straight,” Marty began. “You said that our cemetery—or maybe it’s Barney’s—was opened in 1707, right? And there was a Baptist church to go with it.”

  “Yes, that’s what I found,” I told her.

  “And the church moved or changed hands or was remodeled or merged with other churches for the next hundred and fifty years?”

  “Yes. I don’t think we need to collect all the details, unless the police or the city want to know who might be responsible for the bodies now.”

  Marty snorted. “I wish them luck with that! Anyway, Nell, you said that in 1860—right at the beginning of the Civil War?—whichever church it was then decided to move the whole cemetery. Do you happen to know if they sold the land outright, or the city seized it?”

  “I didn’t see anything about that in the sources I found, but I can keep looking. Anyway, officially the cemetery was relocated in part of the existing Mount Moriah Cemetery, which was already established. That was well south of our cemetery. What’s funny is that the public announcement suggested that people who already had plots could either move their loved ones to Mount Moriah or could pick up the burials and take them elsewhere. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

  “How many made it to Mount Moriah?” Marty asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve looked at a Google map, but the plot whose number I have doesn’t look big enough to accommodate hundreds of burials. Or maybe they took only those whose owners were willing to pay. But they might have better records from the nineteenth century. Before you ask, I haven’t found any church records listing who was buried and where, but I’ve only been looking for a day.”

  “You think what happened was legal?” Dylan asked.

  “You mean, leaving all those bodies behind? I have no idea,” I told him. “And I didn’t notice any tombstones lying around on that lot, although there were some pretty complete coffins, so it seems unlikely that the bodies were just dumped there. Did the Baptists use grave markers? I know the Quakers are pretty low-key about them.”

  “I didn’t see any either,” Dylan agreed. “You think whoever took the place apart in the nineteenth century might have reused the stones for, like, building material? Foundations?”

  “Interesting idea. Let’s make a note of that and save it for later. You know, if we keep finding things like this, we may mess up property values in that part of town. Anyway, right now I don’t know anything more. The authorities may have something to add, like who’s responsible for clearing the ground. Marty, you want to tell us what you’ve got?”

  “You asked me to try to find who owned the house where I found that body. It was vacant when I saw it, and it looks vacant now. Hard to believe, isn’t it? A house standing empty in that neighborhood for so long? Anyway, I started by looking at the 1790 census. Have you ever looked at that, Nell?” When I shook my head, she continued, “It’s really interesting, and it’s available online. The writing is very clear, and there’s lots of detail. It’s divided into columns that list the name of the occupant, which mostly meant heads of families, then the profession of the occupant, how many people lived or worked in the building, whether it was a house or a store, and then the last columns break down the occupants by gender. And the final one is for slaves. And cemeteries are listed, although they don’t count how many people are buried. And there are also listings for both vacant lots and vacant houses.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I really should have looked at this at some point—it sounds fascinating. But does this help us?”

  “Maybe. The most useful thing I found was a listing for the dwelling at the corner of Second Street, on the west side—that’s the side the cemetery was on. It was a mixed neighborhood, with a lot of different professions listed, but the important one for us was that corner lot, which belonged to William Young, who was a printer—and a bookbinder.” Marty sat back and waited for our reaction.

  Dylan perked up immediately. “William Young? The William Young?”

  “You know about him?” Marty asked with a half smile.

  “Hey, guys, fill me in, please,” I protested.

  “And you work in a library, Nell?” Dylan said in a tone of mock horror. “He was one of the first great printers in Philadelphia history. I’ll bet you have some of his work here at the Society.”

  “And at the Library Company,” Marty added.

  “Okay, he was a big name. And we know he was in business there in 1790. What does that tell us?”

  “His shop—which must have been rather crowded, because the census lists five males over sixteen, two under sixteen, six free white females, and one ‘other’—makes you wonder what an ‘other’ was in those days. And we found a document that was added to the binding of a book—or maybe I should say rebinding. All right, maybe another coincidence—but we’re running into a lot of those.”

  “Didn’t Young train apprentices, or were all these his family?” Dylan asked. “Either way, somebody in that household could have done it.”

  “Hold on! Where was this corner house in relation to the house with your body, Marty?” I asked.

  “A couple of doors south, on the same block.”

  “And I’ve got another piece of the puzzle,” Dylan announced triumphantly. “I sketched out Harriet Featherstone’s family tree—nothing fancy, and not too much detail—but I’m pretty sure her family at the end of the eighteenth century lived on the same block. I’d need to do some more digging, but like Marty said, this is another coincidence. Maybe the house with the body was her family’s back then—maybe one of the ones that was vacant then so nobody was living in it. Or they rented it out. Marty, did people rent out houses back then?”

  “Sometimes,” Marty told him, “though renters might not have been included in the census—I’d have to check that. Look, we’ve got a lot of suggestive details, and they kind of fit together, but I’ve still got a lot of questions, and I want to check the details before I tell anyone official. Like our detective friend.”

  “Believe me, I understand,” I said. “And so will she—she wants facts, not wild guesses. That goes for all of us. But it does make a great story. Thank you both.”

  “What do we do now?” Dylan asked. “Do you want us to keep looking?”

  “Actually I’d like to hear what Detective Hrivnak wants to do next. She may not be interested in this stuff and I don’t want to waste our time, unless you’re interested for yourselves, not the law.”

  I almost jumped when my cell phone rang, especially when I saw who it was: the detective. These coincidences were really piling up. I answered quickly. “Good morning, Detective. What can I do for you?”

  “You in the city? If you are, get yourself over here to the building lot—there’s something you’ve got to see.”

  “We can be there in a few minutes.” We hung up at the same time.

  Marty and Dylan were staring at me. “What?” Marty demanded.

  “She wants us to see something over near the cemetery. That’s all she said.”

  “Then let’s go!”

  It took us a couple of minutes to collect what we thought we might need for this unidentified thing that Detective Hrivnak thought we needed to see ASAP. I made sure we took a camera, if the police would let us use it. I tried to imagine what would get her so worked up, but there were too many choices. At least she was including us—or me, at least. She didn’t know I had the rest of my small crew with me, and no way was I going to leave them behind.

  After another few minutes we arrived at the construction site, only slightly breathless. To my surprise, she waved us over toward the house on the street, which I kept thinking of as Marty’s house. We met in front of it.

  Things ha
d changed since we’d last seen it. Apparently the police had decided to deal with the body under the house, and the gaping hole in the foundation had been shored up with wood and metal supports. Now it looked as though an adult could actually crawl into it without worrying that the whole building would fall on his or her head.

  “Thanks for the call,” I told the detective. “Remind me later that we’ve been collecting information about this site that might be helpful to you. What did you want us to see?”

  Detective Hrivnak seemed to be looking at Marty. “You told us when you were a kid you saw a body inside here.”

  “That’s right. Scared me to death.”

  “Was there only one?”

  “That’s all I saw, but I got out of there fast.”

  “Did you see anything else unexpected?”

  “No. One body, which was mostly a skeleton by then, was plenty. I never came back. Why are you asking?”

  “You missed a few things. Take a look inside—don’t worry, we reinforced it. Here—take my flashlight.”

  Marty gave her a dubious look, but then she approached the hole in the wall. She bent low and scuttled in, flashlight lit. For a minute or two she was silent, and then she said, “Holy crap.”

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “You’ll get your chance,” Marty said, her voice echoing. So we waited.

  It was another couple of minutes before Marty crawled out again. I tried to read her expression, but it was a weird mix of surprise and confusion and I didn’t know what. “What is it?” I demanded.

  She handed me the flashlight. “You’ve got to see this yourself.”

  Since she wasn’t sharing, I grabbed the flashlight and dove in, cautiously. The body that we knew about—the one we had seen from Dylan’s pictures—was about five feet in, but now I could tell there was more. But I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. The first body, or what was left of him, lay with its head toward the opening, no surprise. But with the brighter light I could see that there was a second body, lying parallel to the first, and slightly to the rear of it. Male, and from what little evidence there was, about the same age and build as the first one. Okay, that was interesting, but I’d have to digest it, and we definitely needed more and better pictures.

  I raised the flashlight toward the rear of the hole under the building, which seemed to go back quite a ways. And then I froze. There, a few feet behind the two bodies on the ground, was what looked like a substantial stack of . . . cannons? What the heck was a batch of cannons doing under an old building here? I knew next to nothing about artillery from any era, but to my unskilled eye they looked fairly large, and they were shiny brass rather than cast iron and appeared to be in good condition. Oh my. I had no idea what this meant, but I knew I wanted to find out. I was sorely tempted to sit down and study this unexpected find, but I also wanted some answers, so reluctantly I backed out, stood up, brushed off my jeans, and demanded, “What the heck? Were those what I think they are?”

  Detective Hrivnak grinned. “You bet.”

  “Old? Authentic?” I continued.

  “Looks like it. I thought maybe you could help us figure this out. You’ve gotta know more than I do.”

  “Hey,” Dylan interrupted, “do I get to see too?”

  “Here.” I handed him the flashlight. “Go for it.”

  He disappeared into the hole.

  I shook my head to clear it, not that it helped much. I turned back to the detective. “First, let me thank you for showing this to us. Has the medical examiner had a chance to see the bodies?”

  “Nope. He’s kind of busy. By the way, the current body count is around four hundred dead.”

  I hadn’t expected that. “Seriously?”

  “Yup,” Hrivnak replied.

  “Well, for us that’s a good thing that the medical examiner hadn’t gotten to them yet. Can I ask you not to disturb the bodies until we’ve examined the whole site? Wait—did your people go back any farther or is this all there is?”

  “We stabilized the ceiling. There may be more behind, but it’s not passable yet—the ceiling fell at some point.”

  “Okay, Marty? Do you know anyone who would like to help us?”

  Marty looked as though her mind was a few thousand miles away, so it took a moment for her to focus. “You mean, like a historical archeologist? Sure, I’ll make some phone calls.”

  Back to Hrivnak. “Do you have a deadline? I doubt we’ll bring out a herd of people with toothbrushes and dental picks, but I’d prefer you wouldn’t send in a crew with pickaxes and destroy whatever evidence there might be. If any. I think these guys have been here a long time.”

  “Don’t worry,” she replied. “I think we’ve got enough to do with the others over there in the onetime cemetery.”

  And I might be the only person who knew where they’d come from, but I’d be happy to share that information with her.

  Dylan crawled out from the hole. He looked like someone had given him a wonderful Christmas gift. “Wow,” he said reverently.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I told him. “Detective, are you planning to jump into this today, or do you have to get permissions and clearances or some more heavy equipment in first?”

  “The second one. Why?”

  “Because I’d like some time to think about this and look up a few things.”

  “You can have the rest of today, but we might get started as early as tomorrow morning.”

  “No problem,” I said firmly. Which was ridiculous if I hoped to get anything accomplished, but I wasn’t about to let this opportunity get away.

  I turned to look at my companions. Both of them looked kind of shell-shocked, and I wondered if I looked the same. I had not been expecting to find what we found. Marty was at least somewhat prepared, but she’d been looking for only one body, and now we had two, and cannons. Cannons! Where had they come from? What were they doing where they’d been found? They looked to be in pretty good shape, but what did I know? Were they real? Antique or modern? Maybe the two dead men had been dressed up for some sort of reenactment and something had gone very wrong. That was way beyond my expertise to evaluate, but I could certainly do some research on cannons. And in a city so steeped in history, surely there’d be some experts who would be happy to fill us in.

  “The new museum,” Marty said suddenly, and I wondered if she’d been reading my mind.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “You know, the one that just opened a couple of years ago. The one with the tent. There’s a lot of overlap with the Society’s board and theirs, and if that administration doesn’t know cannons, I can’t think of anyone else in the city who would.”

  “Are you saying the three of us should or shouldn’t do some research of our own?”

  “Oh, sure, we can go ahead—we’ve probably got plenty of records. But it would be faster and more efficient to work with people who know a bit more. Let them look at the weapons side. We can still add our parts about the neighborhood and the church, because those have to fit with leaving the cannons there. And the deaths of two men who didn’t belong to the cemetery. Did they live in that neighborhood, or were they just dumped there?”

  “There’s no history of commemorating a burial with a few spare weapons?” I asked dubiously.

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  “Well, I may not know much about how to make a cannon, but I’m pretty sure they’re heavy, so it’s unlikely a group of people would just wander in and park a cannon, much less a whole batch of cannons. Unless it was a large group of people, and you’d think there’d be a record of something like that.”

  I thought for a moment. “Okay, then. So we go back to the Society and do some more investigation. I’m going to check again for information about the church and its members, and maybe Mount Moriah if I have time. Dylan, you’ve probably still got a lot to do with Harriet’s gift and any personal information you can find about her. How close to finished are you?” />
  “Hard to say,” Dylan answered. “I think I’ve found all the new pieces from her collection, but I’ve been looking carefully at each book to see if it’s been altered, which slows things down. Knowing that William Young might have had a hand in binding them, or rebinding them, makes it more exciting, but if that’s true, it would be a shame to take the books apart hoping to find something else. At least we know when he was in business.”

  “Good. Marty?”

  “If I have time I’m going to look into cannons. I’ve met Harold Stevens at the museum, so I’ll give him a call and ask if he wants to get involved. But there is one practical matter to talk about. We were kind of first on the scene, by invitation, when they found the bodies. I’d like to keep the Society front and center publicly, say, if the press wants us to report. We know we aren’t the experts in a lot of these areas, like how to date the bodies or figuring out when the cannons were made and if they were stashed at the same time as the bodies, but we represent the Society, and we need to use that for our own selfish reasons. Like, stay ahead of the story, and make sure the public knows the police came to us first. Can you handle that, Nell?”

  “I’d better be able to! You have any friends at the Inquirer?”

  “I’ve got a few names. I’ll pass them on to you. But we’d better get on it today, or somebody else will grab the attention.”

  “I get your point. But even if we figure out who was buried in the cemetery and what happened, I’d rather run with identifying the two men with the cannons. I wonder if James knows any FBI medical folk. Not that I want to tick off the city’s person, but he’s got a lot of bodies on his hands, even if he doesn’t spend much time with each of them.”

  “Okay, okay,” Marty said impatiently. “Look, I know you’ve got a full-time job, so you can’t just veer off and do something else, no matter how interesting it is. But you can use whatever you find to promote the Society, and it is relevant to your mission. Just don’t get carried away. Find enough details to make a good story, and then let the experts take over. If you rough out the story quickly, I can get it to the right people.”