"And So the Tomb Remained": Exploring Archaeology and Forensic Science within Connecticut's Historical Family Mausolea

By Nick Bellantoni

Stone and brick tombs were repositories for the physical remains of many of Connecticut’s wealthiest and influential families. The desire was to be interred within burial vaults rather than have their wooden coffins laid into the earth in direct contact with crushing soil burden led many prominent families to construct large above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs, usually burrowed into the sides of hills as places of interment for their dead.

"And So The Tomb Remains" tells the stories of the Connecticut State Archaeologist’s investigations into five 18th/19th century family tombs: the sepulchers of Squire Elisha Pitkin, Center Cemetery, East Hartford; Gershom Bulkeley, Ancient Burying Ground, Colchester; Samuel and Martha Huntington, Norwichtown Cemetery, Norwich; Henry Chauncey, Indian Hill Cemetery, Middletown; and Edwin D. Morgan, Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford. In all of these cases, the state archaeologist assisted in identifying and restoring human skeletal remains to their original burial placements when vandalized through occult rituals or contributed to the identification of unrecorded burials during restoration projects.

Each investigative delves into family histories and genealogies, as well as archaeological and forensic sciences that helped identify the entombed and is told in a personal, story-telling approach. Written in essay form, each investigation highlights differing aspects of research in mortuary architecture and cemetery landscaping, public health, restoration efforts, crime scene investigations, and occult activities.

These five case studies began either as “history mysteries” or as crime scene investigations. Since historic tombs were occupied by social and economic elites, forensic studies provide an opportunity to investigate the health and life stress pathologies of the wealthiest citizens in Connecticut’s historic past, while offering comparisons to the wellbeing of lower socio-economic populations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789255034

Nick Bellantoni

Nick Bellantoni, PhD, serves as the emeritus state archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Adjunct Associate Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. He is a former President of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut and the National Association of State Archaeologists.

Book preview

PART I

Tomb Restorations

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Moseley Tomb

And so the tomb remained

Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained.

Thomas Hardy, The Obliterate Tomb

The rusted iron door serving as the sole entrance into the age-old Moseley Family Tomb was practically immovable. We pried its tarnished handle hoping the corroded metal would not snap off in our hands. With effort, the oxidized hinges creaked, opening just enough space to wedge my body sideways over the threshold. Entering the tomb, my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness though I could only discern my shadow cast against the stone of the interior chamber by what morning light seeped through the narrow opening behind me. Unable to distinguish the tomb’s contents, I called for a lamp and thrust my arm out the tight entry to receive it. With the beacon balanced on my shoulder, the dusky interior came into sight.

As the Connecticut State Archaeologist, I had been requested to enter the Moseley Family Tomb at East Haddam’s First Congregational Church Cemetery to conduct forensic analyses of skeletal remains during the vault’s structural restoration, which was necessitated due to extensive water damage, vandalism and collapse of building stones. Constructed by Dr Thomas Moseley, a local physician, in 1790, to repose the remains of his immediate family, the tomb was assembled from dry-laid granite blocks, arched to keystones and was relatively undersized measuring only 13 ft (3.9 m) in length and 10 ft (3.0 m) in width, though at least 8 ft (2.4 m) at its domed peak (Fig. 1.1). The interior walls were whitewashed though now dulled by degradation and time. After 200 years, the weathered tomb was in danger of collapsing, galvanizing the East Haddam Historical Society to raise restoration funds. In light of the rebuilding project, Moseley family descendants granted permission for me to enter the tomb to conduct forensic identifications of their forbearers.

The family was particularly interested in determining whether the ancestral remains of Jonathan Ogden Moseley, the only son of Dr Thomas Moseley, were interred in their historic family burial chamber. Jonathan had served in the Ninth and seven succeeding United States Congresses from Connecticut’s At-Large District (1805–1821) as a Federalist (United States Congress nd). Upon leaving Congress, Rep. Moseley moved to his son’s new residence in Saginaw, Michigan, in the recently settled Northwest Territory where he died on 9 September 1838 while still practicing law at the age of 77 (Dexter 1911, 153–4). The Library of Congress has no burial record for Rep. Moseley hence the contemporary family had no knowledge as to whether he was interred in Michigan, where there was no headstone, or if his body was brought back to the family tomb in Connecticut.

Fig. 1.1. Restored Moseley and Gates/Troop Family Tombs, First Church Cemetery, East Haddam, Connecticut. Moseley Tomb is right background (Photo: Brian Meyer).

With the lamp balanced on my shoulder, I surveyed the tomb’s somber interior. Before me lay a jumbled mass of fragmented wooden coffins and commingled human skeletal remains littering the floor. Pine coffins had been stacked along the side and back walls, one atop the other as family members were entombed. Through time, the desiccating softwood sideboards failed, tumbling bodies and mortuary hardware onto the dirt floor.

As I scanned the scene, the light from the lamp illuminated a human skull lying on its right side facing me. Even from the distant reflection, I could perceive morphological features suggesting that the cranium (part of the skull that includes the face, upper jaw and the various bones that surround the brain case) represented an older adult male of European ancestry, a choice candidate for the elderly Congressman.

Wishing to examine the cranium more closely, I deliberately worked my way toward the back of the tomb careful not to step on any skeletal remains strewn on the floor. As I proceeded deeper into the tomb my lamp cast dark shadows, revealing additional skeletons and coffins, but my interest was focused on the skeletal face peering at me. Bending my knees and crouching over the skull, I reached out to hold it in my hands for closer examination. My extended fingers were within 2 inches of the cranial vault when it started to move, to sway! The skull began to roll slowly side-to-side as if my fingers possessed an energy that brought it to life.

I’ve never seen that before, I thought to myself a bit bewildered. And, just as I was mentally searching for a rational explanation for the cranium’s sudden movement, a mouse sprang out of the skull! I sucked in air and with a professional and scientific demeanor cried, EEEEEEWOW!!!

The base of the skull contains a large hole called the foramen magnum (literally, large hole) through which the spinal cord enters the brain, providing the surprised rodent with an emergency exit as I loomed over it. The terrified mouse was frantically flitting back and forth about skeletal elements and coffin fragments while I pulled air into my depleted lungs. Both our hearts skipped a beat over our sudden encounter.

My colleagues outside the tomb heard the embarrassing shriek and were concerned, anxiously speculating on what had happened to me inside the tomb. So, a bit unsteadily, I rose and slid my body back through the restricted opening to reassure them that I was all right. I mentioned my interest in the skull and the mouse that surprised me. Everyone laughed, though I did not see the humor. One of the masons working on the restoration of the stone tomb, a young man with bulging muscles and crew-cut hair, leaned toward me and asked, Are you afraid of mice?

Hey, give me a break, I cried. It came out of the skull in a dark tomb while I was reaching for it. Regrettably, my attempted explanation only elicited further laughter, so realizing that my manhood had been challenged I composed myself and reluctantly re-entered the tomb.

Piercing the darkness once more, I relocated the skull and ventured toward it a second time, once again sidestepping any of the dispersed skeletal remains scattered on the tomb floor. I nervously crouched down, put the lamp on the floor and lifted the skull, cradling the cranial vault carefully within my fingers and palms. In doing this, I remembered thinking to myself, This is heavier than it should be. And, as I did, two more mice jumped out of the skull while it was in my grasp! I shuddered, but held my composure this time and, as calmly as I could, replaced the skull on the floor and exited the crypt. I had had enough.

The mice, it turns out, were using the empty cranial vault as a nest tightly packing the interior of the skull with leaves and twigs for bedding and winter warmth, thus its unexpected heaviness. At this point, I felt like I had three mice roistering round in my head.

Subsequent forensic investigation of the tomb’s human contents suggested that the skull with the mice may not have been Rep. Jonathan Ogden Moseley, as I originally assumed, but rather, his father, Dr Thomas Moseley, who died at 80 years of age and had built the tomb. Nonetheless, based on forensic techniques and the Moseley family genealogy, the Congressman’s remains were confidently identified amid the tomb’s scattered skeletons. Shipping his dead body from Michigan in the 1830s would have required a method of preservation before embalming techniques were common in the United States.

The day following our incident with the mice and during lunch break, University of Connecticut students and volunteers from the Friends of the Office of State Archaeology, Inc., who were assisting in the recording of the tomb’s contents, presented me with a small gift box wrapped in colorful paper held by a bright ribbon and tied bow. They wanted to give me something they felt I would need in my future tomb investigations. I put down my lunch and gratefully opened the package, revealing two mousetraps.

Published in 1920, Thomas Hardy’s poem, The Obliterate Tomb, appears to have been composed to describe his wife Emma’s sadness in seeing her ancestor’s mausoleum being marred during the crypt’s attempted restoration. Having been left untended, crumbling, weather-stained, restoration efforts removed stones which her grand and great grandparents had put up in years gone by over their vaults, and wept and reflected upon its demolition (Armstrong 2018). Hardy not only laments tombs that are doomed to disappear, but that the names of the deceased will be wiped out in passing years.

By these late years their names,

Their virtues, their hereditary claims,

May be as near defacement as their grave place

As are their fames.

The Moseley Tomb was one of over a dozen untended, crumbling, weather-stained burial chambers I have entered in my tenure as the Connecticut State Archaeologist, a position I held for almost 30 years. My entries into historic tombs were for purposes of contemporary restoration projects, criminal vandalism and, sometimes, even at the request of families wishing forensic identification of lost ancestors. In fact, I suppose one of my claims to fame, or should I say infamy, is having worked inside more Obliterated Tombs than anyone in New England, and possibly in all of America.

Stone and brick tombs were repositories for the physical remains of many wealthy and influential New England families. Their desire may have been to be interred in burial vaults rather than have their wooden coffins laid into the earth in direct contact with crushing soil burden. Hence, prominent families would construct large chambers burrowed into the sides of hills as places of interment for their dead. These are readily seen today dominating the landscape in many historical cemeteries throughout New England.

In contrast, many families of lesser substantial means could hardly afford the expense of an engraved tombstone, let alone an Obliterate Tomb, resulting in numerous unmarked graves within our ancient burying grounds becoming lost and often requiring geophysical techniques like ground-penetrating radar to relocate them (Doolittle and Bellantoni 2010). The majority of New England family tombs were built during and immediately after the American Revolution, persisting in modified form into the 21st century. Over time, many of the older structures have begun to collapse after centuries of neglect; some have even become lost, disappearing from sight and contemporary public memory.

That a tomb could simply disappear within a historic cemetery is hard to imagine. Old tombstones can be easily uprooted and moved and, unfortunately, many have been, but tomb structures seem rather permanent. Yet, they have vanished more frequently than you might think. Some were deliberately buried over with earthen berm to conceal their locations from potential vandals (see Chapter 3), while others were dismantled due to cemetery relocations. Some have lost their family identifications (see Chapter 2), or were never noticeably marked, so that the death houses of once prominent people in the community have been completely lost to history due to lack of recordkeeping, natural weathering and deliberate concealment.

Regrettably, our work inside extant tombs has also involved coordination with municipal and state police departments when vandals have violated them. Breaking into aged tombs is a relatively easy way to recover skeletal remains prescribed for occult and healing rituals (see Chapters 5 and 6) or collecting memorabilia off the dead for profit; much easier than having to dig through 6 ft of hard-packed earth. As part of crime scene investigations, we have entered tombs to record spatial positioning, conduct forensic examination of skeletal remains, match bone elements removed by vandals and research the uses of skeletal anatomy by occult proponents to better understand their motives and ritualistic requirements. Upon completion of the investigations, we also provided assistance in organizing the reburial of the displaced deceased back into their respective vaults.

Our involvement is the result of Connecticut General Statutes providing roles and responsibilities to the Office of State Archaeology pertaining to unmarked burials. Section 10-388 et. seq., enacted in 1990, defines the roles of the Office of the State’s Chief Medical Examiner and the State Archaeologist when human skeletal remains are encountered during construction, agricultural, archaeological or other ground disturbances. The law requires the reporting of any human remains uncovered in any capacity since they could represent modern-day homicides or missing persons. Should the remains be identified as historical (50 years old or more) and not part of a recent criminal investigation, the State Archaeologist assumes management of the investigation. While in situ preservation is the primary goal, most cases require sensitive archaeological excavation, analysis and reburial of human remains according to the cultural prescriptions of the individual(s) involved (Poirier and Bellantoni 1997). The State Archaeologist is entrusted to oversee analyses, including identification of biological and cultural affiliation as well as contacting descendants, when determined. In every case, a contemporary family, church, Native American tribe, or other affiliated organization represents the dead and assists in decision making for final disposition of the human remains encountered. As a result of these legislative actions, we have worked with cemetery associations, descendant family, police departments, municipalities and historical societies whenever we have had to enter the state’s historic family tombs.

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When British Puritans settled along the New England shoreline in the early 17th century, they arrived without a well-established tradition of engraved tombstones, let alone construction of mausoleums. In medieval Europe, only the nobility and wealthiest were buried with identification markers, usually crypts consisting of coffin shaped stone coverings beneath or within churches (Ludwig 1999). The graves of commoners went basically unmarked. Nonetheless, in preparation for death, the dying would often appeal to friends and relatives to have their remains buried adjacent to a church. The desire was to be interred ad santo, or near the saints, whose sacred relics were often contained in the church’s altar. Saints were the only people known to be in heaven, so it was trusted that being buried in immediate proximity to the church would elicit the saint’s support in progressing the deceased through the Pearly Gates. With so many burials associated with urban churches, corrosive quicklime was often applied to the corpses to hasten decomposition and reduce