Digging Up History

by Sheila Connolly

  Tomorrow being Tuesday, the Society would be open to the public. While that didn’t directly affect me, it might get in Dylan’s way, and Marty’s if she chose to work at the Society rather than at home. And I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever finish the board report. I really needed to come up with a spectacular find to justify dragging my heels on the financial statements. “Fine with me. You all want to meet at the Society tomorrow morning?”

  “What about the museum?” Harold protested. “There might be other things worth looking at, as a basis for comparison to these cannons.”

  “True. How about this? We start out at the Society and then walk over to your place, and you can show us any comparables that are relevant?”

  “I guess that would do,” he said reluctantly. “Ten o’clock?”

  “Does that work for everyone?” Everyone nodded. “Then I’m going home now, but I’ll be back early tomorrow. And I’m guessing we’re all going to keep working on this tonight, so we’ll have more information to work with in the morning. Good night, all.”

  I left the former cemetery site after waving goodbye to everyone. I walked about a block away and found a bench and sat, and called James.

  “You’re still at work?” I asked when he picked up.

  “Thinking about leaving. You?”

  “I’m on a bench near Independence Hall. It’s been a busy day. Can you leave now?”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ll meet you downstairs in ten.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I arrived in front of James’s building just as he was emerging from the main entrance. “You look tired,” was his first comment.

  “That’s because I am tired. But it’s been an interesting day, to say the least.”

  “Let’s get the car and head home—you can tell me all about it on the way.”

  I stayed quiet while he maneuvered his way out of the parking lot and headed for the suburbs. Once he was headed north, out of city traffic, I felt free to talk. “I feel like each of us is trying to research and produce a thesis in only two or three days. At least there are three of us—no, four—looking at different aspects.”

  “You’re still talking about the lost cemetery?”

  “That’s only one part of it. After hearing Marty’s story, the police took a harder look at that first body. Only it turned out to be two bodies, more or less tangled together, and behind them were pristine British cannons with King George’s initials on them.”

  “Which means they date from the Revolution?”

  “Maybe. But right now we have no guesses as to why they are there and who the dead men are and why the dead men were more or less lying on the cannons. In the meantime, the police department is trying to figure out where to put four hundred other dead bodies.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “Yup. Wonder of wonders, the Society actually has a print copy of those people who were buried there, but there’s no guarantee that it’s a complete list, or who got moved to the other cemetery. I have a gut feeling that there was some skulduggery there in the nineteenth century, but I really don’t have time to explore all the options. Suffice it to say, I think the church people just got tired of moving bodies, or ran out of money, and quietly covered them over. Is that a crime?”

  James answered seriously. “I have no clue as to who owns dead bodies, here or elsewhere, or who was responsible for their ultimate disposition. But I’m pretty sure that now that they’ve been revealed, the city can’t just cover them up again. Should be interesting to see if they can find a law that covers that.”

  He drove in silence for another mile or two. “So, you said there are four people working on this now?”

  “Yes—Harold Stevens, another contact of Marty’s. She seems to know everyone in the city. He’s the expert on artillery at the new Revolutionary War museum, and we thought we should have someone with some experience look at the cannons. He was very excited.”

  “Don’t they already have cannons at his place?” James asked.

  “Sure, but just a few. They don’t have a couple of dozen.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, a whole batch of matching, never-used large bronze cannons with King George’s initials on them.”

  “I would call that a ‘find’ by any standards. What are you going to do about them?”

  “Detective Hrivnak is letting us look into all the details, as long as we can do it fast. She doesn’t want to leave a large pit full of bones open in the tourist part of the city, which I can understand. But then there’s the problem of what to do with all the bodies. And I fully expect the archeological slash historical community, academic or other, to descend like a flock of vultures looking for details.”

  “And you want to get ahead of them?”

  “Only for the first announcement. None of us—at least, not Marty and me—are experts, although Harold is, and Dylan’s working on it—but Marty and I want bragging rights for the discovery, to promote the Society. I know, that sounds self-serving, but our discovery could be important, and it’s certainly interesting. And in my personal opinion, it seems almost criminal to simply put all that evidence of Philadelphia’s past in boxes and file it in some basement somewhere. I know I already feel different about that neighborhood, and I’ve been working in that part of town and, heck, even walking by all those bodies without even knowing it. I feel like I have an obligation to figure out what went wrong there, as a public member of the museum community.”

  “I can respect that. But I do have to wonder if you’ve been hanging out with me too much. You’re treating this as a forensic exercise—here is the victim, cause of death was whatever, weapon was something-or-other, and then you start looking at identifying the victims, and finding out if they were local or from somewhere else, if they knew each other, or if other people in the city knew them. And so on. Maybe there’s a series in it for you.”

  “You mean broadcast? Could be fun, but we can’t count on finding a new body a week. At least, I hope not. You want to help? You find the bodies, and I and my fearless and overeducated team solves the crime, assuming there was one.”

  “I’d have to clear it with the FBI. Is there a crime here?”

  “For Marty’s two men, I’m pretty sure there was, although the medical examiner is going to have something to say about that. We did ask that he examine those two bodies first, to determine cause of death. There was nothing obvious, but it was hard to see much. If we do find projectiles, I guess Harold would be the best person to ask. As for the cemetery issue, I think that’s more a legal issue, since everybody who was found there was dead when they were placed there. Since I’ve already figured out what church was originally involved, and what happened through the years, I’m less concerned about that. Although maybe someone in the Philadelphia medical community would be interested in examining the corpses to see how they died. Once we assign them dates, of course, and that spans well over a hundred years. That’s one place the Society published list could come in handy.”

  James was smiling, and I realized he had been for a while. “Have you listened to yourself? Did you ever think that you, as a professional fund-raiser and library administrator with an English degree, would be taking the lead in investigating a crime or crimes that happened a couple of hundred years ago?”

  “Should I apply to the FBI for a job? You know, my research indicates that there are probably a lot of forgotten cemeteries in the city—maybe I should specialize in identifying old anonymous corpses.”

  “You’re enjoying this,” James stated. It was not a question.

  “You know, I am. But it isn’t as crazy as it sounds. The Society is keeper of much of the written history of the city, and we’re always looking for more. Why bother to collect all this stuff if not to put it to practical use? I don’t mean specifically hunting for bodies, but why are some buildings where they are? Why are some preserved and others torn down to make way for parking lots? And it doesn’t all have to be about th
e really old stuff. How many people know who John Wanamaker was? Why was the Reading Terminal Market preserved while any connections to the Reading Railroad are long gone? I’ll admit it: this kind of stuff fascinates me. We need to know at least some of our own history.”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Nell. I agree,” James said quietly.

  “Good. Now can we think about dinner?”

  Once back home, fussing over pots and pans (easy spaghetti: boil water, cook pasta, open a jar of sauce, dump some grated cheese on it—and pour a couple of glasses of wine to go with it), I found I couldn’t turn off my brain. Yes, I was having fun solving a puzzle, albeit one with a lot of pieces missing. Yes, I was enjoying working with other like-minded people and pooling what information we found. And yes, I could see a way that this could benefit the Society, which was paying my salary. And I enjoyed laying hands on antique items, not because they were valuable but before they themselves had a long history. Maybe I always hoped for a glimmer of a psychic connection to a book or somebody’s silver teaspoon. It hadn’t happened yet, but I kept hoping. Of course, I’d never tried it on a humongous cannon—maybe that would have held on to more psychic vibrations over time. Unless of course all of them were fake. Heck, maybe they’d been created solely to muddy the deaths of the two men. So one had a nice old button—there were plenty of those available online for a small fee. If I was going to camouflage a recent death or two by making it look like a long-ago death, how would I go about it?

  “Nell?”

  “Huh? Or, what?”

  “Are you going to sleep?” James asked.

  “Maybe. Shoot, we’re supposed to meet at the Society in the morning. Are you planning to drive?”

  “I am. You need a ride?”

  “Yes, please.”

  We cleaned up the kitchen (one pot, two plates) and went to bed early, and then awoke early. I hadn’t changed my mind overnight: I was still enjoying the effort of trying to understand why all those bodies had emerged only this past week, after lying in (or on) the ground for a century or two. It didn’t seem logical, but there had to be a reason. And my band of friends and colleagues, coupled with the resources of our combined institutions (as well as Marty’s family library) gave us material that might help us find answers. I guess I had forgotten that history could be fun, not something boring from a book that had to be memorized for a test at school. And we were living (Marty) and working (me) in the midst of all that history, even though most people couldn’t see it as they trudged by. There had to be a way to make history more vivid to people.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When I was getting ready for work, I realized I had a full day’s work ahead of me plus a meeting with Harold, Marty and Dylan about the cemetery and the two dead men with the cannons. That was easily two days of work, and my heart was racing even before I stepped out of the shower.

  After a hurried breakfast, James and I took off for Center City. I was glad he’d volunteered to drive. Much as I enjoyed taking the train, it was sometimes unpredictable, and I needed all the time I could scrounge if I hoped to finish anything today.

  When James dropped me off in front of the Society building it wasn’t even nine o’clock, but our little band of researchers was already waiting, sitting on the top steps in front. For a moment I thought it was funny that we were all so excited about investigating dead people, but I’d long since learned that historians had unusual tastes. Besides, these particular dead people had a place in the city’s history, if only we could figure out what it was.

  I got out of the car and greeted them. “You’re early, but then, so am I. Let’s meet in the conference room under the stairs, and then we can take off for Harold’s place. Assuming you don’t have a mountain of materials to spread out. I apologize in advance that I haven’t had time to add anything new since yesterday to the information we’ve collected, unless you count how to share this with the public most effectively. Which is, after all, my job.”

  “Nell, let’s just go in now, shall we?” Marty said. She sounded grumpy.

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered. I unlocked the door and we trooped in, turning left in the lobby to reach the original conference room that was concealed under the grand staircase and was seldom used now. We settled around the long table and spread out what notes we’d brought.

  “If I may make a comment,” I began, “I say we should start with the two dead men and the cannons. The cemetery bodies are more appropriately the city’s jurisdiction, and while we can answer some basic questions like what church they were associated with, and maybe what went wrong, it’s beyond our scope. I have a feeling that the two men under the house fall more in our jurisdiction. There may be some overlap, but I think we need to focus. Agreed?”

  Everyone nodded solemnly.

  I turned to Harold. “Harold, am I right in thinking that we need to look at the cannons first and the bodies second? It’s quite possible they’re connected, but authenticating and dating the cannons should give us some insight into the bodies.”

  “I think you’re right,” Harold said. “As you might guess, I went back to the museum after we parted last night and examined those pieces most like the ones we’ve found, as well as their condition. I’d be happy to share with you the entire history of cannon manufacture, but I suppose we should save that for another time, so I’ll give you the short form. Artillery was manufactured in multiple places, but we are most concerned with England and this country. Cannons in a variety of sizes and configurations were the mainstay of battles on this continent in the seventeenth century and beyond. The forges were most often located as close as possible to the raw materials, such as coal, which would be necessary to melt the metal for casting. Pennsylvania had an ample supply of those materials. And as you might also guess, there was a need for materials for the carriages to move the cannons themselves. You can’t just drag a cannon to the battlefield, so you need something with wheels. And don’t forget the ammunition and the gunpowder necessary to fire them. Of course, when managed correctly, they have an amazing range—as much as a mile or more.”

  I felt I had to interrupt him. “Harold, you are a font of information and I’d love to know more, but can we get to the point? We can look up the history of cannons on our own.”

  Harold sighed. “I do get rather enthusiastic. But to cut to the chase, in my opinion those cannons that emerged yesterday are authentic, were made in England and shipped to Philadelphia in a single shipment, but were never fired. And they most likely date to the 1770s, based on my comparisons with similar weapons.”

  “One shipment?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes. They are all in the same condition, and also share some distinctive casting marks.”

  “So we can reasonably guess that they were shipped here to support the British war effort?” I asked.

  “That would be likely,” Harold said.

  “So how did they end up under a house here? Admittedly it was near the river, so can we assume they were delivered to Philadelphia by boat?”

  “I would say so.”

  “Why did they not end up where they belonged?” I asked.

  “That is harder to answer,” Harold admitted. “You have seen that at least one of the two dead men may have been British, based on the rather slim evidence of the button. But he alone, or even with the help of a second man, could not have easily transported one cannon of that size, much less two dozen of them. Certainly not through one of the busiest parts of the city. There had to have been others involved.”

  “And why choose that spot?” I pressed on. “Sure, it was close to the river, which would have made it relatively easier to unload them. With help, anyway. But why that particular house? From what little we’ve looked at, there were quite a few vacant properties in that area that would have served. Stuffing them all under a residential house, rather than, say, a warehouse or a boatyard, was not an obvious choice. At the very least it doesn’t seem well-planned. I could understand moving around
boxes of muskets, but cannons?”

  “Maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment decision?” Marty suggested. She’d been suspiciously quiet, not just this morning but for the last few days. Had she been that rattled by finding the body from her childhood? And she hadn’t even known about the second one. Or did she have some inkling of an explanation but wasn’t ready to share it? She knew more about the nuts and bolts of Old Philadelphia than anyone else I knew. Why should she hide information?

  Harold seemed to snap to attention once again. “So, let us assume we now have a date—the 1770s—and a reason for them to be here—the fledgling American Revolution. Which leaves us with some rather important questions. One, how did they get here? Two, why were they never used, by either side, in the conflict? Three, who was responsible for that oversight?”

  I volunteered, “I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a lot about that era—or maybe era is stretching it. That early time of the Revolution must have been chaotic in this city. Nobody was quite sure who to trust, or which way they leaned politically. A lot of people who could afford it left the city for the country, thinking it might be safer. But daily life went on. You have only to look at old city maps of the waterfront to see how much shipping and presumably shipbuilding was going on then. And as it applies to our problem here, all those changes meant that even if there had been a 1770 or 1780 census, many houses might have been empty at the time.”

  “There are earlier lists—tax records and such,” Harold said, his tone contemptuous.

  “Harold, I know that, at least in general terms. But will that point us to a particular person or building?”

  He sighed. “Does it really matter?”

  That surprised me. “You don’t think so? Aren’t you curious? We’re talking about an important time in both national and local history. Somebody had a stash of high-end weapons and sat on them, possibly through the war. Don’t you want to know who and why? There may be other legal and practical issues beyond that, like who do the cannons belong to now? The city? Can they be auctioned? Would your museum like some or all of them? And who would benefit?”