Digging Up History Read online

  “Thanks for the reality check, Marty. But that applies to all of us—a bit of church history, a dash of genealogy, and some insight about the neighborhoods back in the eighteenth century. Something for everyone. And as you reminded me, don’t get caught up in a tangent just because it’s interesting. If people want more, they can come looking for us. Can we get this together by the end of the day?”

  “Yes,” Marty said. “So let’s go.”

  We split up and went to our separate corners. I sat down at my desk and tried to decide where to start. I turned on my computer and opened our electronic card catalogue, listing all the Society’s documents and books, and the first thing I came up with was a guide to the gravestone inscriptions for the lost cemetery. Duh. How had I missed it yesterday? I wrote down the call number and trekked to the stacks. When I found it I sat down on a stool and skimmed it. As near as I could see, it did account for some or all of the removals to Mount Moriah, but for the Center City burials only names were given, not where within the cemetery they had been buried. Still, it was a start, and it might be helpful to the police or the medical examiner.

  And there I stopped. I was sure there was more information buried in some library somewhere, but did we need it now? I’d put together the basic outline of what had happened, but this was a police investigation, not a social history. I’d probably collected enough to keep most people happy. So now what?

  I had to admit that two dead men and a stack of old cannons was more interesting than a few hundred skeletons when we knew why they were where they were, even if we couldn’t put names to them. So I should turn back to the two mystery men and the cannons. How old were those cannons? Where did they come from? And why were they under a building?

  In a totally irreverent thought, I reminded myself that I shouldn’t publicize that the city was built on who knew how many dead bodies—it might discourage tourism, or alternately, suggest that tourists should come equipped with shovels and do some digging of their own. Some people might find that creepy, but others would probably be excited by the idea.

  Where to start? Surely we would have some information on metal casting at the Society. That would take a forge, right? Something to melt the metal before molding it? I understood that there had been quite a few around Philadelphia—including Valley Forge, which was probably the best known by outsiders. Then there was the question of where the raw materials had come from. I also happened to know that there were several important mines in Pennsylvania, since we had some members who were descended from the mine owners, but I wasn’t sure that would help, beyond proving that the materials would have been available early on.

  How one actually went about putting together a cannon was another issue, and there I’d need help. And of course, cannons needed wheels or carriages or something just to move them from one place to another. There would have been some sort of wheels in that hole under the house, but it seemed improbable that there would have been enough of them to move the number of cannons we’d seen. Which I speculated might have meant that the cannons were not battle-ready, but they were being transported from one place to another before whatever battle they were intended for. What’s more, I was pretty sure that a quick examination of the cannons themselves would probably show whether they had been used or were new.

  I was beginning to think that calling in the weapons expert sooner rather than later would be a good idea. We needed to date the cannons, and find out if they’d ever been used. And where would this person want to examine them? Surely not under the house. At police HQ, or at his own home base? Or even at the Society? It might be fun for people to see them up close and personal, in their original state, not all polished up and pretty. But we’d divested ourselves of physical collections at the Society, in favor of books and other printed materials, so it probably wouldn’t work.

  I fished out my mobile phone and called Marty, who I knew was still in the building. When she picked up she sounded preoccupied. “What?” she barked.

  “I’ve been thinking—maybe we should talk to your weapons expert sooner rather than later. That should give us some dates and a point or points of origin. Where would he want to work on them? I can call the detective and confirm whether they’ll be ready to remove the bodies and the cannons tomorrow, and where they will put them.”

  “Good point. But we should also think about where they’re going to end up. If we all wait for someone at the city to determine who the original owner was, we could be waiting a long time. Better get it settled now.”

  “I agree. You want to make the call?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  After Marty hung up, I decided I should look up a few details about cannons—or refresh my memory at least, since I’d read up on them a bit when I’d been looking at the story of the Battle of Paoli, out in the suburbs. That was why I knew they had to be moved on wheels—which had failed miserably when the Americans had tried to get out of Paoli in the middle of the night. But I didn’t know much about the range of sizes for cannons, and what size shot they took, and what each size was intended for. Or how to make them, for that matter. I knew one when I saw one—a cylinder with a hole in it. Ammo went in the back end and came out the front end. And that was all.

  So I pulled together a sample of documents and a book or two and started reading. In what era should I start? I collected facts along the way. In the later eighteenth century, there weren’t a lot of foundries in the colonies, but the Continental Army needed the big guns—that was their main weapon. They were made of bronze and steel, but steel was stronger. The French had helped out by providing some of the metal. The shot and cannonballs used could travel as far as two miles, but the average range for cannons was one to two thousand yards. And, yes, I’d been right: they needed the carriage to move the things around. Cannon types included field guns, which were mobile, and siege guns, which were bigger and heavier. There were also mortars and howitzers.

  I decided to ignore the last two models: I knew what I had seen were cannons. They had been expensive to make, as was the gunpowder that fueled them. The basic model, which was the most often used for a couple of centuries, was made of cast iron or bronze, with a cartridge of gunpowder, and a projectile. When fired (apparently lit by a tube filled with gunpowder), it had a wicked recoil and had to be dragged back into firing position by the gun crew.

  I decided I’d read enough. I wasn’t sure I needed to know what they shot, only that they could fire something. In other words, they weren’t anybody’s pretty garden ornament. The big ones were unwieldy and hard to move, and then you had to think about moving the ammunition as well. They came in a lot of different sizes, and the cannonballs ranged from three pounds to twenty-four pounds. I came across one reference that said that in 1776 sixty twelve-pounders and eighteen-pounders were cast in Pennsylvania.

  By now I realized that my education in military history had been pathetic. Most of this information I had never thought of. Sure, I’d seen cannons, in battlefield parks or city monuments, but I’d never considered how they worked. But I’d been a girl, and we weren’t supposed to care about things like that. Yet here I was, trying to figure out what the things under the abandoned house had been, how old they were, and why they were there. Had anyone ever gone looking for them? Had they been deliberately hidden or just dumped? Were they intact or broken?

  I gave up. I knew just barely enough to talk about the things without sounding like an idiot, but I would never manage to learn all these details, nor did I really need to, because there were people in the city who could tell me what I needed to know. I’d wait for Marty’s call and see if she’d found us an expert.

  As if by magic, my phone rang at that moment. It was Marty. Without preamble she said, “Harold is on his way over to the construction site. He’ll meet us there.”

  “Huh? Wait—who’s Harold?”

  “Harold Stevens. He’s on the board of that Revolution museum. Have you heard anything from the detective?”

>   “About what?”

  “Getting the bodies and the cannons out of the hole.”

  “No. We can sort it out when we get there. I hope Harold isn’t fussy about dirt.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I found Marty and Dylan waiting impatiently downstairs in the lobby. “What’s the story on this guy Harold, Marty?”

  “He’s on the museum board, along with a lot of other people, many of whom you probably know. He’s their artillery specialist. You know those cannons out in front of the building?” When I nodded—I had a vague memory of walking past them—she went on, “He was responsible for finding them, authenticating them, and persuading the rest of the board to install them front and center. You should know that if you walk around Philadelphia a lot, you’ll see other cannons here and there.”

  “I’d bet people found them too heavy to move and just left them where they found them. We’d better get going. I take it we’re going to let Harold see the cannons?”

  “I hope so. Of course, Detective Hrivnak will have to get the bodies out first, and I’m sure she can’t wait to show them to us.”

  “I hope Harold brought a photographer, or we may lose evidence.”

  “We’ve told her about six times to preserve the setup and any artifacts she finds. Let’s hope she was listening.”

  “I’ll let her do what she wants with the other couple of hundred,” Marty said glumly.

  We set off briskly and arrived less than ten minutes later. Marty waved, and a guy I had to assume was Harold waved back to her. He was younger than I had expected—but why did I assume board members were grizzled old men? (Probably because they were the ones with money to donate, I reminded myself.) When I got closer I realized he did look kind of familiar, so I probably had met him before at a Society event. Detective Hrivnak stood behind him, looking like smoke was coming out of her ears.

  “I haven’t touched anything, so you archeology types can stop worrying,” she said. “Can we just get this over with?”

  Harold ignored the detective and turned to me. “I understand you’ve got two bodies in front of an unknown number of cannons, under a building?” Harold asked eagerly. “Any ideas about the dates?”

  “Yes about the bodies,” Marty said, “and no clue about how old they are. I figured you’d want to see the bodies first, before you looked at all the artillery. You might notice something we wouldn’t.”

  I thought Marty’s comment was an understatement, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Are the bodies wearing uniforms?” Harold asked.

  “I don’t think we’ve gotten close enough to tell,” Hrivnak said.

  “How long does cloth survive under the circumstances?” I followed up quickly.

  By now we were standing in front of the shored-up foundation. Harold studied it, poked a toe at the ground, and sniffed. “Since this is close to the waterfront, I’d assume it’s always sort of damp, which wouldn’t be good for natural fabrics. Don’t count on finding much, unless we get lucky and find some metal buttons or something.”

  “What shape are the bodies in, Detective?” he went on.

  “Nell, you’ve seen more of them than I have. What’s your take?”

  “Well, the bodies were identifiable as human bodies, though there wasn’t much flesh left,” I said after thinking for a moment. “All the pieces were in the right order, not like they’d been ripped apart by animals or even dissected by another human. There were enough shreds of cloth to identify them as clothed. And I’m not even going to guess how old the bodies are or how long they’ve been laying here.”

  “I can help you with that,” Harold volunteered.

  “Good,” the detective said. She gestured over to a couple of guys standing by a couple of gurneys, waiting for us to finish. “Guys? Let’s get this started,” she called out.

  They approached and entered the hole carefully. I checked off one more area of expertise that I was lacking: moving old bodies. I didn’t think I could handle it if one fell apart in my hands.

  Marty, Dylan and I stepped back and watched from a respectful distance. Harold was more eager and got as close as he could. The work didn’t progress very fast, but I assume jostling the remains would mean we might lose important evidence. I tried to remember the history of money in Philadelphia, in case there were coins in the pockets of the dead men, but came up blank.

  It didn’t take long for the first man to emerge from the hole, and the coroner’s people, or whoever they were, laid him out carefully on a gurney, without losing any bits and pieces. I was less disgusted than I expected (thanks to watching a lot of crime shows)—what I felt was mainly curiosity.

  The detective was eyeing me, probably wondering what I would do next. “Can I get closer?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you can do any harm at this point. Just don’t touch,” she responded.

  Marty was looking kind of pale. She gave Harold a push and said, “Go ahead, check it—him?—out.”

  “Thanks,” he said quickly, and moved to stand beside me. We stood and stared for a couple of minutes. My quick assessment was that yes, he was male, with a surprising amount of leathery-looking flesh still attached; he wasn’t particularly tall, maybe my height; he was wearing some remnants of clothes that looked handmade, but I could have been wrong. Still, I was pretty sure they predated commercial sewing machines. He still had most of his teeth. I hesitated to guess at the cause of death, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a bullet hole. So maybe he died in a fight? “Harold, what do you think?” I finally asked.

  “Hard to say,” Harold replied, his gaze never leaving the remains. “Maybe a particularly strong blow, or a stab wound, which wouldn’t be obvious in his condition now. No uniform. No apparent personal weapon, although it could still be further in the hole or it was buried under the body. I’m not much help, I’m afraid.”

  I looked around for Marty, who seemed to be retreating. She really must have been upset by finding the body as a child and never quite gotten over it. “Anything to add, Marty? Is this the man you remember?”

  “I’m no scientist. He’s a skeleton, but he looks like he’s been dead for a long time. That’s all I can say.”

  “Ready for the second one?” Detective Hrivnak asked. When we all nodded, she gestured to the gurney guys to wheel away the first man and retrieve the second. That took another couple of minutes, since there was less room to maneuver farther back inside the hole. Finally the second man emerged into the sunshine, and Harold and I crept closer again, followed by Dylan.

  I decided that to my eyes a skeleton was a skeleton, period. This one looked to be about the same size as the first man, but if he was no more than a couple of inches taller or shorter I couldn’t say. But, I realized, there was something different about this man: what was left of his clothes was more substantial than that of the first man’s, and he was wearing boots. And Harold certainly looked more excited now. He looked over at Detective Hrivnak. “May I touch him?”

  After a moment she nodded. Harold approached the body carefully, then reached out for something on its chest, though I couldn’t see what it was. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding something small and round and grayish. He laid it carefully on the open palm of his other hand. “It’s a button,” he said reverently.

  I came closer and peered at it. “Metal. Is it military, do you think?”

  Harold nodded. “What insignia do you see?” He held it out toward me.

  I looked more closely, and then despite the corrosion the image came together for me. “It’s a crown.”

  “Exactly. It’s British, or at least Loyalist—those folks who remained loyal to England, at least up until the war.”

  “So that gives us a date,” I said, almost to myself. “Can you date it?”

  “I’d have to check some sources, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s from the 1770s.”

  “And the man wasn’t wearing a really old coat?”

  “If h
e’d been American he would have changed the buttons.”

  Detective Hrivnak’s voice cut into our quiet conversation. “You guys about done? Because we’ve still got the cannons to dig out.”

  And, I reminded myself, there could be more interesting souvenirs scattered around inside the hole. Harold asked politely, “Detective, may I keep this button and do some more research? I’ll give you a receipt if you want.”

  “Sure, fine,” she said—clearly she didn’t think it was very important. She turned to the gurney guys. “You, take the bodies back to the ME’s office. He’s expecting them. But treat them carefully—too much banging around and you’ll end up with a pile of bones.” The men took hold of the first gurney and trundled off toward a waiting van at the curb.

  While the detective organized the delivery of the bodies, Harold, Marty, Dylan, and I stood there looking shell-shocked. I wasn’t sure what to think, and we didn’t have a lot of facts to work with. On the recent end, Marty had seen the nearer body nearly half a century ago, but I couldn’t begin to guess how long it took a body to deteriorate to its present condition. On the earlier end, Harold believed the button he had found on one of the bodies dated to the era of the Revolutionary War. It had still been attached to what was left of the body’s clothing. Which could mean that the body too dated to the Revolution, which was not particularly unlikely for this end of the city.

  But where did the cannons fit in this picture? And why were there two men dead, and why had they been left in this location? We had a few answers, but a lot more questions.

  “Ready for the cannons?” Detective Hrivnak asked loudly.

  “Should we rummage around the space first?” I asked.

  Harold answered quickly. “Won’t make that much difference, Nell. You can do the sifting after they’re out of the way.”

  “How much do these things weigh?” the detective asked him.