Transcript

Introduction to Hub History and the Old North Church

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 291.
History in bricks and bones. Recent discoveries in the crypts inside North Church.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week, we’re continuing our partnership with Old North illuminated.
If you visited Old North Church over the summer and fall of 2023 you might have noticed that they weren’t offering their usual crypt tours even if you didn’t visit.
You’ve likely seen press coverage of their project to remove and restore the old wooden doors and enclose the crypts in the church’s basement as part of the project.
They also made some improvements to make the crypts more accessible.
Wrapping up the project just in time to reopen the crypts for the Halloween season.

[0:58] The church celebrated its 3/100 anniversary in 2023 and the crypts are almost as old dating back to 1732.
In those nearly 300 years, the crypts have been the final resting place for sea captains, military officers, wealthy aristocrats and revered clergy, opening the tombs for restoration, posed a unique opportunity to survey and document the burials within Jane Lyden Rousseau led the team of archaeologists who studied the crypts during this unique opportunity.
While none of the burials were disturbed, her team was able to carefully study the contents of each crypt, learning more about death rituals and burial customs in colonial New England.
In a talk she gave as part of the old North digital Speaker series in December.
She shared more about the history of the old North crypts as well as what her team learned by looking within.
Among the questions that will be answered are when old North buried congregants beneath the floor of the church, how many people had their final resting places there?
And how church sextons made room for a staggering number of burials in a very limited space.

[2:13] But before we meet Jane and learn more about her work, I just want to pause and say a big thank you to James R.
Bruce W not Bruce Wayne and everyone who supports hub history on Patreon.
This podcast has been on the air for over seven years now and we’ve grown a lot in that time when I look back on the very first episode we ever released.
I remember being excited when a few dozen people downloaded and listened to it fast forward to today.
And we have thousands of listeners from around New England across the country and even places like Austria, Australia and Ukraine, generous sponsors like Bruce and James have made this growth possible, enabling me to pay for the growing expenses of the show, like podcast media, hosting, web hosting and security A I tools, access to research, databases and online audio processing tools, to James Bruce and everyone who’s already sponsoring the show. Thank you.
If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy.
Just go to patreon.com/hubor or visit hubor.com and click on the support us link.
And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

Introduction to Jane Lydon Rousseau and Her Work in the Crypt

 

[3:33] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[3:37] Jane Lyden Rousseau is an osteoarchaeologist and burial specialist based in Boston.
She’s a steward of museum collections at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and a consulting scholar for Old North Illuminated.
Her research of the old North church burial crypt has been presented in lectures to the publication of The Lonely Belfry and the Dead.
An historical and archaeological study of the burial crypts of Boston’s Old North Church and has been developed for use unofficial behind the scenes tours.
Jane earned her master of science degree in human osteology and funerary archaeology from the University of Sheffield and her Bachelor of Arts from Boston University.
We thank Old North Illuminated for allowing us to share this talk with you.

Jane:
[4:28] Welcome everybody tonight. I’m gonna talk to you all about the crypt of the old North church.
First, I’m gonna start out with a little bit about the history of the crypt and its significance to the history of Boston within the north end community and within the history of our country.
And I’m going to touch a bit on death and burial customs at the time that the crypt was used during the 18th and early 19th century in New England.
And mostly I’d like to talk about the recent restoration within the crypt.
That was a partnership between the old North church and historic site and the National Park Service and uh has kind of culminated very recently.
And um I think all of us are very excited about this work.

[5:16] I started working on the crypt back in 2006, I was fresh out of graduate school and I was very interested in what the crypt had to say about the history of Boston.
I learned from a colleague that it existed.
First of all, I, I didn’t know um at the time, it was mainly used as sort of a storage site, what were called alleyways, they walkways within the crypt where youth to store things that, uh, the church wasn’t using anymore.
You know, it was sort of, you would go down there and it would have a very new England cellar feel to it with tombstones kind of set into the wall.
Most of my work at the time because everything was sealed up was at, uh, the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is where all of the ledgers are housed that include all of the burials that have taken place at the old North Church, historically, um as well as marriages and baptisms.
And so I poured all of all of those in addition to that doing a preliminary survey of the tombs, sort of trying to get a background history that would be useful um for tours and for any kind of further research, but also.

[6:31] To sort of have a, a baseline uh in terms of uh recommendations for restoration and any kind of preservation that would be possible in the future.
So, based on that, the fact that there has been recent restoration that’s happened to the tombs is very exciting.
I’m really glad to see that.

Description and Layout of the Old North Church Crypts

 

[6:51] So the crypt itself, it’s beneath the nave of the church, uh which is the main part of the church where the pews are.
It’s directly beneath that and it includes 37 tombs.
They’re all brick vaults and there’s a block of vaults at the center of the cellar and then all along the sides of the cellar as well.
So you can kind of imagine what that would look like.
Uh, the doors themselves that are on the tombs. Most of them are made from wood and they have large iron hinges.
Um, they would have been locked closed and sealed until they needed to be open to more burials inside.
Uh, there’s a few of them that are actually made of slate and there’s one in particular that’s kind of an outlier that’s made of granite and only a few of them have markers.
When people go on the tours, they see that the tombs have these slate markers that are kind of embedded in the brick next to them and they might have one or two names on them.
That’s a very small, very, very small fraction of the people that have actually been entombed in the crypt over the course of history.
And while they’re very interesting to see, I, I’ve realized that I should take them with a grain of salt because they sometimes aren’t very accurate.

[8:07] It’s likely that there’s been hundreds of individuals that have been laid to rest within the tombs at one point or another.
When finding out exactly how many people might have been in tomb in there, you really have to kind of pore over the history of how the crypt is used its itself over time.
The church itself old North was built in 1723.
As Catherine mentioned, this is the ancestral homeland of the Massachusetts.

[8:34] Uh The first tomb was built nine years after the church was first founded and that was in the autumn of 1732.
So that was tomb one and tomb one is actually um the largest of the tombs and it’s the most easily accessible from what was then and is now the cellar entrance.
So, uh if you’ve been to the Old North, it’s the entrance that comes from the courtyard and goes directly down into the basement.

[9:01] At the time, it would have been possible for sextons or any kind of funeral possession to take the coffin directly through that door into the door of tomb one.
And it was just a straight shot shortly after that tomb two was built directly behind it.
And so in the years that followed, um a lot of very wealthy and influential members of the church, started to want tombs for themselves to ensure that their families and themselves would have a comfortable resting place when it came time for their, their burial.
And so the church realized that they needed to make some guidelines if they were to build more tombs because they only had so much space to deal with.
So they issued guidelines that said they are not to exceed 6.5 ft from the wall and 8 ft wide from side to side and as high as the floor to support it.
So the tombs themselves are these brick structures, they do partially support the floor.
So the brick walls go up and the uh f floor beams above sit directly on them.
Fortunately now, for quite a while, they haven’t been the only thing that supports the floor.
So that is good to hear.

Increase in demand for burial space and public access

 

[10:17] Uh around the turn of the 19th century, the church began getting more and more demand for burial space beneath the church.
They realized that this could be beneficial financially. Uh because the more tombs that they could commission, they could collect more profit for the church.
Though the ledger shows that this wasn’t always a financial benefit.
Sometimes it was very practical.
And one example that I like to show uh there’s Shi Bell who is the senior warden of the church in 1808.
And the reverend doctor William Walter, they had requested vaults in return for labor services that they offered to the church.
So they actually, uh were directed by the wardens at the time.
They were given half of the land under the porch of the church for building a family tomb on the condition that they took up the floor of the porch and had it laid in stone or tile.
So they did a favor for the church and sort of redid their, their porch and, and were able to have this burial space.
And then the rest record shows that tomb eight and two. Tomb nine are actually their final resting places.
Um So that was a suc successful transaction.

[11:35] Around this time, also, the tombs were opened for public burial.
So up until then, it had kind of been where a wealthy family could commission a tomb and that would be their tomb that would have a deed to it.
And over time, it was determined that uh it would be better if they could have, people who could, you know, be buried in these tombs.
And it wouldn’t be quite so official where this tomb would just be for this family.
Part of this was in 1812, they created a tomb that was for the interment of strangers.
Um Now a stranger in this sense is referring to someone who was not a member of the congregation.
Um It could have been someone also who was not a known member of the community.
They may have been someone who was traveling from out of town.
You know, there’s, there’s entries in the ledger where it’ll say something just like a first name and stranger, stranger of, you know, Mrs Smith or some, some kind of relation to someone, someone from the congregation would have provided the fee for burial and they could have been interred in tomb 14.
And so that’s, I think that’s one of the most popular stops on the tour actually is The Strangers Tomb because it’s a very intriguing stone.

[12:49] And at that point in 1820 there was a total of 33 tombs within the cellar.
And that meant it had near nearly doubled since the, since the previous assessment had been taken in 1808.
And so at that point, they decided to build three more tombs which were beneath the vestry of the church.
And that brought the total up to the 37 that we know of today.
And that completely maxed out the cellar to say the least.
And so in 1845 they decided that if more tombs couldn’t be built, there was no more, no more room for them, then they were going to have to reuse the tombs.

[13:27] Which was something that was, you know, not as controversial as you might think at the time.
This is something that they decided the oldest tombs would be swept clean first and the new burials could be interred and more profits collected.
Uh So in January of 1849 the first tomb that was built.
Tomb number one, the ledger shows that it was the first one to be cleared of its contents.
What they did at the time, they wrote down in clearing the tomb, all coffins upon which the plates were plain and legible plates.
Me meaning name plates that are affixed to coffins or carefully laid aside.

[14:09] The remains were then put into boxes, procured for that purpose.
And the plates were nailed on the boxes in their proper order.
And all was left and said to after this was done, more tombs were swept in the years following.
See, there’s actually something from uh a sexton from 1856 who kept diaries and I find these diaries fascinating.
They’re a very interesting read, but he calls himself a sexton of the old school in Boston.
And he refers to tombs throughout the city, not just at the old north church, but he says tombs like other tenements will change owners if no, Survivor is at hand to prevent.
And the new proprietor has other tenants whom he prefers for the dark and gloomy mansion and they in process of time shall be served in a similar manner by another generation.
This is no exception. It is the general rule, the common course of dealing with the dead.

[15:08] Now, this brings us to uh what happened to all the remains.
We have that one report from tomb one that says that the remains were basically reb boxed and placed back into the tomb.
They were consolidated and the coffins would been broken down.
That’s not always what happened. So, uh this brings us to the concept of the charnel house or the charnel.
And basically, what would happen was, it’s a crypt set aside for disposing of skeletal remains and they would be swept aside once they had sufficiently decomposed.
Um All of the coffin wood could be discarded and uh then the tombs could be reused.
And this is something it’s not as common in New England, particularly at this time.
This is something that’s seen a lot more in uh the crypts of Europe.
One of them that comes to mind is um the catacombs of Paris.
They’re an example of a very, very large charnel house, uh mostly from Pearla Shed Cemetery.
Uh when the the burials were spilling over and they would be disinterred and brought into the, the catacombs.

[16:19] Oh, another example that I have is uh New Orleans burials.
This is uh an example of a oven crypt, which is a very grim name and this is why they’re called that the upper levels are actually tombs, burials would be put into the tombs and they had to stay in there for exactly one year and one day.
And the city considered that sufficient enough time for them to decompose where they could be opened, the tombs would then be swept and the bones would be pushed back to the back of the crypt and then they fall down through a little opening, falling down into the space below which is called a cavo.

[17:00] And uh the bones collect in the cavo, which is sort of like another type of charnel.
And you may be thinking one year and one day, the key here is that includes a New Orleans summer which would be sufficiently hot enough to accelerate decomposition significantly.
So one year and one day and all of its left is bones I should say in New England, it was actually a lot more common to rather than a journal.

[17:29] If it was a burying ground they would just kind of keep piling dirt higher and higher and burying higher and higher.
And, you know, one that’s a good example. Uh, you see this at Cops Hill quite a bit, which it’s, it’s built on a hill anyway.
But, uh, the hill has been expanded just by, you know, having a burial and when that burial is sufficiently, um, decomposed burying on top of that with more dirt and more individuals.

Concerns of overcrowding and stench in the tombs

 

[17:59] Uh So this understandably leads us to, uh, in 1853 there were some concerns put forth from the Board of Health in the city.
Basically, the, uh, you know, repeated cleaning out of the tombs, constantly opening the tombs, reentering more and more people as we’re letting, um, you know, more people would be buried in the tombs.
Uh Basically, it was the stench of death that would have been coming from the building throughout this very, very uh congested neighborhood.
It was getting more populated, more dense.
Um It was understood to be very unsavory to say the least.
Um If you are at the old North church and you go outside into the courtyard and look at the side of the building, uh right at the ground level, you can see these little, uh vents, they’re like little gaps in the brick, uh all along the outside and those are actually vents that were put into the crypt to, uh, I guess promote airflow to kind of, you know, alleviate the smell and to not only that but to speed up the process of composition.
Um So kind of a fun fact if you’re over there, take a look.

[19:17] I have a statement from uh a sex of the old school as he calls himself uh in his diary.
Uh He says the tomb is opened for newcomers every time a new burial is in her, and sometimes most inopportunely and the horrible smell fills the atmosphere and compels the neighboring inhabitants to close their windows and doors.
I can only imagine.

[19:45] Uh So after over 100 years of youth, um the government of the City of Boston orders, the clipped the crypt, sorry, close to further burials.
Uh And this is following similar ordinances in uh New York, London, Paris.
Uh This was something that was growing in popularity.
Um And an entry in the Vestry record in the ledger uh wardens were advised not to regard this unless compelled to do so.
Um And there is evidence that they continue to keep burying uh until about 1860 when the tombs were sealed and abandoned and all titles that still existed were completely eliminated.

[20:31] This also coincides not, not so coincidentally with what’s known as the beautification of death movement.
Um And this is also the rise of garden cemeteries right around this time.
So uh they were seen as a center of beauty, contemplation, um nature, you know, very open and airy and beautiful.
Um And of course, the Nation’s first Garden Cemetery uh is Mount Auburn Cemetery, right in Cambridge, Massachusetts, uh which was built in 1831, and followed shortly by Forest Hills in Boston uh in 1848.

[21:10] And um you know, this, this whole movement was related a lot to concerns of over overcrowding in the cities.
Um Dead bodies were seen as unsanitary and not only that they were seen as a danger um that they could infect the living.
Interestingly. One early advocate of garden cemeteries uh is Sir Christopher Wren, who um if you’re a fan of the old North Church, you probably know he’s uh an English architect and he, after the great fire of London, um sort of was responsible for designing a lot of the rebuilding within the city and he designed something 50 something churches, I think around the city.
Of London and the old North church is uh very heavily inspired by his church architecture.
So um his style of the old North.
Meanwhile, he, he was a big advocate for not burying within a crypt in a church.
Um and Washington Irving, who’s one of the, uh romantic writers at the time, uh stated that the grave should be surrounded by everything that might inspire tenderness and veneration of the dead or that might win the living to virtue.
It is a place not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation.

[22:32] So clearly, clearly referring to um trying to create that uh comparison to, you know, the.

[22:42] The morbidity and the death and grossness of the tomb versus this light airy beautiful space.
Um And so, you know, it’s, it’s not hard to understand why at that time, this fell out of favor and the tombs were closed.
Um And so that brings us to the crypt after closure.

The sad state of the crypt after closure

 

[23:06] This is a sad picture. Um But it’s uh one of the crypt doors that was sealed off.
Um And that’s the original wooden door with the iron hinges.
And uh around the 19 twenties, they had an issue with a lot of the wood from these doors kind of crumbling away.
And uh there were reports that people had seen um bones spilling out into the walkways of the tomb of the crypt.
Uh So at the time, it was covered with this kind of uh mesh chicken wire type material and then plastered over and over time.
Um, big chunks of that started falling off, leaving the doors looking just in disrepair for quite a long time.
So, when I first met the crypt in 2006, this is uh how things looked it was, you know, needed a lot of work and, um.

[24:00] Yeah. So there are still some stories.
Uh It’s interesting that the historian uh who worked in the 19 thirties who interviewed a lot of the congregation, a lot of the neighbors in the north end and has a lot of stories from people about their experiences with the crypt.
Um And that would have been after its closure. So, you know, in the late 19th century, mostly.

[24:25] Um there is a church member who was a choir girl in the 18 sixties and she said, uh we would light candles and go down to the tombs to see a girl with golden hair lying in her coffin.
Someone would blow out the candles, then we’d all scream and run and a carpenter at church.
Uh In 1912, he told someone that, when a pane of glass in the church was broken, they would go down into the tombs and uh take a pane from one of the coffin lids and in the basement and they would insert it in the window sash, because glass would be readily available, um which I’ll explain later.

[25:07] Um And another tale of uh I guess morbid curiosity for people at the time.
Um in 1930 another parishioner told our historian that when he was about nine years old, uh it was my habit to stroll along with sight, see sightseers viewing the old north.
If the visitors appeared the right sort, financially, I trailed behind them in the depths of the crypt, mid, the gruesomeness ever to greet the imaginative in this dead house under the church.
Quietly hinting to the coin bearer of the party that for a paltry quarter, I would offer Uncle John.
The coin bearer generally responded. I produced the key lifted from its hiding place in the grandfather clock in the dillaway house next door, unlock the vault, raised the half shattered coffin lid and by the flickering light of a tallow dip carried for their marauding expedition.
Uncle John was again on exhibition involuntarily working to increase the wealth of his thirsty descendant.
Years after the generous heart had ceased to throb.

[26:16] I, I love that story. I just love how, how um poetic it is and strange.
And, and so since, since then in the 20th century, uh there’s been a lot of changes.
Um There’s now a fire suppression system that exists in the crypt that’s been there for a very long time.
Um Lots of plumbing and uh conduit for wiring.
Uh There’s radiators, um all of which is, you know, kind of just spaghetti through um the tombs in the walkways and uh there’s also the Columbarium.
Um So a columbarium is uh something that is used to house uh urns of ashes.
So, uh it’s a structure that has niches put into it and each niche uh receives an urn uh of a cremation burial.
And there’s a modern Columbarium that is still used for burial today that’s under the vestry of the church.
Um So just gonna have a sip of water and I’m gonna talk a little bit about uh burial customs at the time that script was active.

Burial Traditions in the 18th and 19th Century

 

[27:40] OK. Uh So in the 18th century and early 19th century, that’s the time frame that we’re looking at here, uh in European tradition and new England tradition, uh burial near a church was seen as maintaining a closeness to heaven.
And more importantly, maybe a closeness to one’s community, uh church community family.
Um There is a gravestone inscription from uh a graveyard in England that I love.
And it says uh here lie i by the chancel door.
They put me here because I was poor, the further in the more you pay.
But here I lie as snug as they.

[28:25] So they’re right near the door. They, they’re not under the church but they’re right near the door.
Um And in these tombs, uh so these tombs within the old North crypt are barrel vaulted.
So, um, the best way I can describe it is it, it looks a bit like a brick pizza oven.
Um Just picture them being quite large about 8 ft by 8 ft by 6 ft.
Um And uh coffins would be uh arranged and stacked, and sometimes if someone was wealthy enough, they might have uh shelves inside usually at the back or shelves on either side.
Um You can see something similar if you think of like modern uh masala.

[29:13] That you might see if it’s, um, a chapel in the center and then there will be uh shelves on either side for caskets to be entombed.
Um So it’s similar to that, although if they didn’t have shelves, they would be stacked, uh sometimes as high as they could be stacked.
Um, which meant that they could sometimes collapse because that’s quite a bit of weight.
Um In 18th century New England, um, the coffin style that was used is uh referred to as single break construction.
So these were usually made from a soft wood, uh, commonly pine and single break construction, um, was so that the shape is a, uh, it’s like an anthropoid shape.
It looks like uh the shape of a body and where it’s wider at the shoulders, narrow at the toes.
Uh, it’s sometimes called a toe pincher coffin, um, appropriately, and, uh, early on it would be nailed shut.
Um in later times they started using screws to kind of screw down the lid of the coffin.
Um, and I’ll, I’ll tell you a bit about that waiter.

[30:26] Uh, and then they would have been, um, sealed with pitch as well, just pine pitch and then lined with the cloth.
Um, usually the cloth would be something that would look appealing.
It would be something attractive because that might be seen.
Uh, but beneath that, uh, it would be stuffed with a pretty thick layer of sawdust or wood shavings or some kind of, um, fibrous material.
That was, it served as a bedding for the body, but it also, uh, was crucial for, um, absorb, absorbing any kind of, uh, affluence, I guess.
And, uh, you know, sort of helping also with, with the odor.
Um, and, you know, they would put things in as well, like, uh, um, things that might smell nice.
So, you know, flowers or, uh, pine boughs or anything like that. Mm.

[31:24] Uh And then most importantly, um it would be a fix with a coffin plate and this is a small plate that would have the name of the deceased, their date of death.
Uh It was usually made from a soft metal like copper lead or tin.

[31:41] Um And these coffins were usually made by local cabinet makers.
Um So it wasn’t until later that they were uh more of an official capacity as coffin makers.
These would be cabinet makers that would also make coffins and uh the body would be prepared by the family.
Um Most commonly female members of the family, though not exclusively and uh they would be waked within the home.
So within the family home and that just meant that the um individual would be in their coffin, uh usually in the parlor or in some kind of family gathering area, um where people could come and pay their respects.
Uh They had coffins most, most often during this time, had a viewing window which uh brings us to the glass pane that I said I would explain.
So the viewing window is positioned uh over the face of the individual and it would be a small pane of glass through which you could see their face.
Um, that was partly to kind of keep, uh a physical and also, you know, spiritual distance between the dead and the living.
Um There, there would have been an odor. This is in a time before embalming.
Embalming didn’t take off until, uh, right around the civil war.

[33:09] Um And so the individual would be laying uh in the parlor for quite a few days, and it also, um, give people a chance to kind of, you know, say their goodbyes.
Have some more time with the individual.
Um, and.

Uncovering the Secrets of the Crypt

 

[33:35] OK, so I’m gonna talk a little bit about um who is tuned within the crypt.
So this is probably a question I get asked more than anything as people are really interested to know who’s, who’s buried there.
Why are they buried there? Is their family buried there?
Um And so the way that you, that you can find this out is through the burial registers that were kept by the clergy.
Um And so this almost always has the name uh their age at death, sometimes the cause of death is listed, although it’s not common.
Um And around 1792 a series of deaths were attributed to an outbreak of smallpox, um which you can definitely see happen in the Ledger.
Um There’s also yellow fever right around uh when the crypt was 1st 1st built uh in 19 sorry, in 1806, death by consumption, which is now called tuberculosis uh began to appear as a common occurrence.
And that’s a disease that uh thrives in urban centers in crowded areas.
So as you see the north end becoming more developed, uh consumption becomes more of a an issue.

[34:54] Uh So I have a list of common causes of death that are listed in the ledgers.
Um, and this included bits or seizure, dysentery fever, natural decay or aging. I love that one.

[35:10] Recurring fever, diarrhea, canker, fever, warm fever, dropsy or edema, whooping cough, inflammation of the bowels, jaundice, palsy, scarlet fever, lung fever, or pneumonia, falling, burning, scalding, drowning and even a sore throat.
So, there, there’s a variety here.
Um, I think, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to see, I think it’s something that we hear a lot that life was, was hard.
Historically, you know, it’s, it’s a lot of these things that I think now we would just simply go to the doctor or we would just treat it home, um could have been absolutely fatal and were, and, you know, it really is interesting to see when you see them in the ledger tied to specific individuals.
They kind of really um emphasizes the fact that these were, these were real causes for concern for these people.
And this is how they, this is what their lives were.

The North End: Wealthy Citizens and Resettlement

 

[36:20] And so, uh throughout the 18th century, uh there were many wealthy and prominent citizens in the North end.
Um And in the years following the revolution, a lot of the wealthy members uh began to disperse throughout the city and throughout the area.
And by the end of the 19th century, um the north end was continually resettled um by a lot of immigrants from Europe.
Um And from by, uh, formerly enslaved individuals as well.
And, uh.
So actually, um at the time, the old North church uh baptized more black parishioners than any other church in New England.
And there are many, many instances in the ledger of marriages, baptism, funerals of black parishioners that were being conducted by the church.
And uh they’re recor recorded in the register.
Um Any documentation of funerals that are held for these individuals is unfortunately, uh very brief and their race is always specifically mentioned. Um.

[37:38] The people are always uh they’re often referred to as belonging to a white parishioner.
So you may have um for instance, a first name and uh you know, belonging to such and such a person.

[37:53] And so you don’t really get to know who these people are.
Um And it’s really unfortunate, you know, I’ve been trying to find if there are any black or indigenous parishioners, um citizens of the North end who might may have been, definitively entombed in the crypt. I’m having a very hard time.
Um A lot of this information unsurprisingly is not recorded.
Um I think this is an avenue that really needs further research.
Um It’s something that, you know, I don’t want to be lost to history.
I would like this to be uncovered.
Um There is one instance of one indigenous woman uh mentioned in the Ledger and her name is Jerusha Will.
And I noticed that um the old North Church has a podcast on their website that recently had an episode that featured her.
Um I would love to know her story and you know, if she has any connection to the crypt, I have no idea.
Um This is something when I say that, you know, there are areas for further research. This is a big one.

Prominent Members of the Congregation and their Tombs

 

[39:13] Um And so a few of the prominent uh Bostonians members of the congregation that um, we had questions about, you know, going in when we were looking uh within the crypt.
And uh one of them is the Reverend Timothy Cutler, the founding rector of Christ Church, the Old North.
Um And he died in 1765 and he is supposedly in tomb 18.
Um And then there’s also Captain Samuel Nicholson, he’s the first commander of the Constitution Old Ironsides.
Uh He died in 1812 and he is meant to be in tune seven.

[39:57] And uh the biggest mystery uh is Major John Pitcairn.
Um If you’ve heard of him, you, you may have heard of his connection to the Old North.
Uh He was the commander of the British Marines at the battle of Bunker Hill, and uh described as an active, ambitious and hard drinking man.
Uh He was beloved by his regiment and respected by the citizens of Boston.

[40:23] Um So, uh the legend surrounding his burial is that um he was moved to Westminster Abbey uh back to his native England.
Um after the war, uh he, he was placed into one of the tombs at the Old North, uh, for a time and then once the war was over, he was, uh, presumably taken home.
Um, unfortunately, there’s no evidence of his burial ever being moved from the Old North.
Uh, because there were no entries, uh, listed during the year 1775 to 1778 because that was during the war of independence.
Um And so there’s no record of him being moved in the ledger.
There’s no record of him still being there. So, is he still there?
Well, we’ll talk about that, uh, which brings me to uh the restoration of the tombs and the archaeological work that we’ve done uh within the crypt.

Plans to Restore the Crypt: Tomb Doors and Masonry

 

[41:31] So, um, initially.
Let’s see. So this is in 2017, um when, the plan, I guess, well, the plan uh as far as restoring the crypt was to um remove the original tomb doors and have them professionally restored.
Uh The masonry within the tombs needed to be reappointed. It was very crumbly.
Uh There were lots of um places where bricks were missing or spaing or broken.
Um The plan was also to lower the floor.
Uh So the floor that was in there at the time, uh is poured concrete and was put in in the 19 sixties.
So it’s very much not historic.

[42:19] Um And the floor was going to be removed uh in order to make it more accessible for visitors and for tours.
Um because at the time, it was uh very hard to walk through without bumping your head on a pipe or, um you know, there was no uh accessibility unless you could walk down a couple of stairs.
Um And so in order to lower the floor or, you know, get rid of the, the concrete that was in there, um It was decided that it would be taken up and the floor, the original dirt floor beneath it would need to be lowered uh in order to kind of allow people to pass through easier.

[43:00] Um And so the archaeological survey was going to involve initial test units and these are archaeological test units uh within the walkway of the crypt.
And so the plan was to do four of these test units um to see uh if there were any burials beneath the floor.
And you might think that sounds a bit strange, but uh we had cause for concern.
And this is mostly based on um a 19 sorry, an 1812 sermon from the reverend doctor Asa Eaton who was the rabbit of the church at the time.
Um And it was uh well, I’ll just read it directly.
He says, uh some years since and this is in 1812, while the workmen were employed in the cemetery building tombs, one of them found the earth so loose that he settled his bar into it full length with a single effort.
About 6 ft below the bottom of the cellar.
He found a coffin covered with coarse linen cloth sized with gum which on boiling became white and the texture as firm as if it had been recently woven, within this coffin was another protected from the air in a similar manner.
And the furniture was not in the least injured by time, the flesh with sound.

[44:28] And somewhat resembling that of an Egyptian mummy.
The skin when cut appeared like leather. The sprigs of evergreen deposited in the coffin resembled the broad leafed myrtle.
The stem was elastic, the leaves fresh and apparently in a state of vegetation.
From the inscription, it was found to be the body of a Mr Thomas, a native of New England who died in Bermuda.
Some of his family were among the founders of Christ Church.
His remains when discovered had been entombed about 80 years.
They now rest in the northeast corner of the cemetery and the stone so long concealed from observation is placed over them.

[45:09] So according to Doctor Eaton, um there had been a burial found underneath the floor of the crypt and this is before the crypt had been built, that this burial would have been placed there.
So based on what he said, it sounds like they had replaced the burial um somewhere in the crypt.
And so we did these test units to see if we found any evidence of grave shafts.
Uh Fortunately, we didn’t, which was very fortunate.
Um You know, ideally, we were hoping that we wouldn’t encounter any burials.
Um and that the work could continue without disturbing any remains.
That was sort of the ideal situation.

[45:53] Um And although we didn’t find any burials, we did find um quite a few interesting artifacts uh that were clear evidence of funeral activity.
Um and other burials. Um So we found coffin furniture, uh furniture being another word for hardware.
So uh coffin handles, coffin tacks, um as well as burial shroud pins, uh other kinds of um they may also have been used for other kinds of textiles within the coffin and uh a plate of window glass, and um window glass.
Although it’s not definitive by any means. I would not be at all surprised if it’s from a viewing window.

[46:42] Um, and you’ll see it was not the only piece of viewing window glass we found.

Exploring the restoration of tomb doors and its implications

 

[46:52] And so that brought us to the other part of the, um, initial work, that was done, which was to uh use a tomb kind of as a test case to see if the doors could be removed for restoration.
Um What would that would entail? And we, if the doors were removed, what would we find that?

[47:17] And so Tomb 12 was selected, selected for that purpose.
Um This was a very exciting day this um so I should say these excavations and all of the archaeological work uh was conducted by myself and by uh the city archaeology program.
Um and with uh myself uh Joe Bagley, Nadia Klein and Lauren Sharp.
And uh this was a very exciting day.
This was um Joe and I were able to start doing our survey and uh, Let’s see, this was a tomb that had been cleared according to the Ledger in 1844.
Um So we weren’t really sure what we were gonna find.
You know, was it cleared because of um the, the general smell in the area, the board of health concerns um was it never refilled again?
Where were we gonna find a completely empty vault? We really weren’t sure.
Needless to say it was absolutely not empty.
Um We got in there and found um major, major coffin collapse.
So we had to cut, this is a reconstruction that, that Joe made and uh we determined just trying to figure out what we were seeing because it looked um.

[48:43] It was just a massive pile of lumber.
Um All of the coffins had collapsed over time.
There were human remains. Um There were uh lots of textiles, lots of um wood shavings that I had described as being, you know, the, the base of the coffins.
Um But this is kind of what we were thinking it looked like originally and it would have been four layers.
Um at least of adult coffins um with infant and child coffins placed on top of them, um which would would have involve rearranging every time a new individual was placed in there.
Um So the coffin collapse, I should say that doesn’t necessarily happen because coffins are placed on coffins. It happens over time.
Um A lot of that is based on decomposition, but it’s also um, when the iron um nails that are holding the coffins together, when they corrode because of humidity, they um start to split, they pop out and the boards fall apart.
Um So there’s not much holding these coffins together. And so that would result in, you know, over time they just fall apart and fall apart.

Understanding coffin collapse and interesting finds in Tomb 12

 

[50:01] Um And so, uh we found some interesting things in this team though and um we, I should say we uh our plan for doing this excavation was that we weren’t going to touch anything.
We weren’t going to disturb any of the remains.
So we did this all just by sight.
Um And we just wanted to record everything that we could see.

[50:27] And so, uh we did see um skeletonized remains of about three individuals.
Um One included an infant uh with fragments of a bonnet and three pages from the Bible uh were scattered on a few of the coffins.
We don’t know which burial these were associated with because they were very scattered.
Um One page is from the Gospel of Luke.
Uh and it described the resurrection of Jesus, which we thought was a highly appropriate offering for a tomb.
Um Interestingly, the coffins have a very similar style and construction uh which we determined likely date to one specific period.
So if it was cleared around 1844 and prior to the closure of the tombs, the official closure, it was a very specific short period.
Um They all look very similar.
Uh It’s possible they could be from the same cabinet maker. Um.

[51:31] And so that was a very uh good intro for us into the 2023 season of archaeology, uh which is really when the project began in earnest.
Um So this was, I believe in February or March of 2023.

[51:51] Uh And this is when the tombs were opened.
Um So we had uh of the tombs that were opened, eight of the original wood doors were to be restored.
Um The tombs that had slate doors or the one with the granite door.
Um Some of them that were just bricked up, those were not opened because those were not going to be uh the doors weren’t gonna be restored, they were just gonna be left as is.
So our goal was not really to open all the tombs. It was really just um the doors were being, taken out and this was our opportunity to get a survey and get a look at what we had, you know, what was going on.
Um And so of course, we formulated some research questions and I think, you know, going in, these are some of the things that I really wanted to have answered, wanted to kind of explore.
Um Number one, do the tomb still contain burials?
Uh based on how they were cleared and reused, it was sort of uncertain.
Um If so, which tunes and would this correspond with the record of clearing and reuse that the ledgers show?

[53:07] Um, what’s the state of preservation in the tombs are the burials stable?
Um Is this something if there’s a lot of degradation, is it something that’s gonna keep continuing?
Um You know, is it uh is the replacement of the door is going to change that because it’s creating, um, there’s a microclimate in there, you know, there’s a small space, is that gonna change if the, doors are changed or if they’re temporarily opened?
Um Are the burials consistent with what’s known about funerary customs of the period?
You know, are we gonna open these and find something completely different?
That would have been very surprising, but you never know.
Um And you know, what if anything can we learn about the individuals based on what we find, you know, based on the style of coffins, their clothing, any kind of stylistic changes about the coffin furniture, um or the individuals themselves.

[54:07] And uh those prominent Bostonians that I mentioned earlier, are they present and accounted for?
Um, you know, that’s something that I think comes up a lot on tours and, you know, it’s certainly something that people have been wondering.
Um And so as I mentioned, this was a non invasive survey.
Um And so what Joe Nadia and Lauren and I were doing, um it was key that there was no disturbance to the remains or the burials.
Um You know, this for us, this was kind of an ethical framework for the work that we were doing.
Um You know, we were very careful that uh if there were any kind of uh media that were stopping by, you know, we let them know that these were our guidelines and we, we really enforced that, um, there, uh, one of the criteria that we had was, um, we wouldn’t touch anything unless we needed to because it was going to be dangerous for the remains.
Uh, for instance, if, um, there were a few instances where the doors would be removed and something might fall out, um, whether it be coffin wood or remains, um, in which case, we would have to be very careful about, um, replacing it. And, um.

Exploring the Empty Tombs

 

[55:30] So the doors themselves, um they were removed uh along with their cells.
So there was nothing left there except for the brick.
Um And so we were able to get a pretty good wide view of what was in each tomb.
Hm. Um And so most of our research was focused on uh digital photography and 3D scanning, which we just took loads of photos that we’re still poring over and compiling and it’s quite an archive.
Um Lots of notes. Um You know, we had time while the contractors were um removing the doors to kind of pour over each tomb and discuss what we were seeing and, you know, bounce ideas off each other.
It was really nice to work with such great colleagues that we could, um, you know, sort of have this uh this discussion about everything that we were looking at.
Um So in short, uh the tombs were definitely not empty, not, not one of them.
Um All of them contained burials and some were filled to capacity.
Uh like tomb 12, nearly all of the tombs had coffin stacked in about 2 to 3, sorry, 2 to 5 levels.
Uh Leading many of them to coffin collapse.

[56:55] Uh The states of preservation within the tombs varied quite a bit.
Um, a lot of this was based on the location of the tombs relative to the water table, um relative to the heating system, exterior walls, uh and also the date of entombment.
So, understandably, burials that um were earlier, were not as well preserved in ones that were later tended to be better, but that’s not universal Um, tombs that were, um, at the lower end of the crypt, uh, which is closer to, um, I guess, closer to the water, the ocean and closer to the water table.
Uh, there was quite a bit of decomposition, there was not much there, um, and tombs that were closer to the altar side, the higher end of the, the ground, um, did have better preservation, but again, that wasn’t across the board.
Um, so we had.

Remarkable Preservation and Variation in Burial Conditions

 

[58:03] Let’s see. Uh There was pretty remarkable preservation with um the individuals themselves, I think, you know, that was, um that was pretty incredible to see.
There were um some individuals that were completely skeletonized, uh where, you know, there was, there was not a lot of bone left.
Um And some had a lot of uh um salts on the bones where the salt kind of um, extrudes from the bone itself um due to high humidity.
So it’s sort of a glistening type of material. Um It’s not necessarily recognizable as bone when you see it.
But um it’s that, that was what was left of the burials.
And then there were others that were um pretty remarkably uh mummified naturally, um where they were desiccated and, you know, had, had a bit of a sleeping look about them, you know, where they just um looked like they were much more recent than several 100 years ago. It was pretty incredible.
Um And.

[59:17] Let’s see. So just right off the bat, some of the questions that we wanted to answer.
Um Reverend Timothy Cutler, uh when I talk about preservation being really good right under the altar, uh his tomb comes to mind.
So he again was the founding rector of the old North Church.
Um He died in 1765 and he was 82 and he is in tomb 18.
Um So he is uh presumably buried there with his family.
And um when we opened his tomb, um I think his was one of the last that we, that we did.
But he in there, we found the coffins of uh approximately four adults and three babies or Children.
Um And they appeared very undisturbed.
Um Otherwise the tomb was mostly empty. Uh There, it was relatively um undisturbed.
And so it looked to us that, you know, when they were placed in there, um.

[1:00:24] You know, around 1765 and other family around that time, it looked very much like, um, they hadn’t been served, you know, his, his, we know was not cleared.
There’s nothing in the ledger that indicates that his was reused.
Um So we believe that uh Timothy Cutler and his family are still in tomb 18.
Um These coffins were in excellent condition. They didn’t suffer.
I don’t think any coffin collapse if I remember correctly. Um And they looked uh like they were a bit nicer than, than some of the other coffins.
So it looked like it was an important individual.
Um And someone had taken great care to kind of ensure that this burial site would be preserved.

Captain Samuel Nicholson’s Decomposed Tomb

 

[1:01:10] Um and Captain Samuel Nicholson. Um and he again was the commander of Old Iron Sides the US S Constitution.
Uh He died in 1812 and he is in tomb seven and tomb seven is at the complete opposite end of the crypt.
Um And when we opened this tomb, uh at first, we thought that it had been cleared at some point.
Um There basically, all we could see was uh the outline of four coffins in the soil.
There was nothing left.

[1:01:46] Um In fact, it hadn’t been cleared. I, I think we’re very confident in saying that what had happened was, um, this is the lower end of the crypt.
It’s much wetter down there. It was very humid. Um You could tell just by the, the environment in the crypt today.
Um And it looked as though the burials had never been disturbed.
They were just very well decomposed.
Um You know, it was, it was actually, um, it was kind of nice to see.
I know that sounds strange, but, you know, it, it looked as though they hadn’t been disturbed. That was the final resting place.
Um It presumably is uh Captain Nicholson and his family, um because it was several adult individuals.
Um And that was a very different appearance to what we saw in Timothy Cutler’s tomb.
Um Again, it’s, you know, just different conditions in different areas of one space can do very different things in a burial context.
And it was really interesting to see those two comparisons.

[1:02:55] Um And of course, major pitcairn, um who was presumably taken back to his native England.
Um In that, in that tomb, um major coffin collapse, many uh collapsed burials in there, there was one large fairly ornate coffin that was mostly intact.
However, we have no reason to think that this is Major Pitcairn.

[1:03:23] Um You know, it would have been helpful if it had any kind of indication on it about who this is or who anyone in this tomb is.
Um, you know, I, I think the, the legend continues because we couldn’t really say who this was.
But, you know, we don’t, there’s no reason to think that it’s him.

Coffin Hardware: Handles and Styles

 

[1:03:51] To talk a little bit about what we did find. Um I have carefully uh propped out any human remains from any photos.
Um And I’m gonna show some pictures of coffin hardware that we did find.

[1:04:09] So, um here are some pretty good examples of uh different types of handles that we found on the hardware, sorry, on the coffins.
Um The bale handle which was found initially in the walkway um that I had talked about that we excavated in 2017.
Um and a bar handle that is on a coffin in one of the crypts and they’re very close.
Um From what I could tell, uh they’re close in date in terms of their style.
The bar handle is a bit more complicated because it involves a lug um that kind of goes into a bolt and then they screw together.
Um Whereas a bail handle is a little simpler and the bail handle you can see is, is quite a bit more corroded.
And so, you know, my, my theory is that uh the bale handle may possibly have been found in the walkway, you know, when a tomb was cleared at some point, this was left behind, um, from one of the coffins ended up buried.
Um So it’s from an earlier date and then the bar handle is from a later burial.

[1:05:25] And uh that one was then placed into the tomb.
So, you know, there, it’s a possibility that’s 11 scenario, but they are fairly close in time period.
Um I should say they’re from, uh like the mid 19th century.
And so we found lots of other interesting um.

[1:05:50] Interesting things that kind of allowed us to, you know, focus on a time period. Here.
There’s um lots of viewing windows. This is uh an example of a viewing window that uh has a cover that has a hinge on it with a little latch that could be used to open and close.
Um Lots of nameplates.
But as I said before, these are made from soft metals, um like lead or copper and they um corrode very quickly and they were unfortunately all illegible.
We couldn’t find one that we could get close enough to either that was actually we could able, we were able to read it.

[1:06:32] Um example of curve cutting.
So a lot of the coffin boards we saw had uh these curve cuts which are pretty interesting.
They saw cuts made to the wood that would be on the inside of the sideboards of the coffin, write about the shoulder height and these little um hash marks make it so that the coffin boards can be bent.
So it involves uh less pieces of wood, fewer pieces of wood and they can be bent around to kind of fit the shape of a burial.

[1:07:06] Um and very coarse textiles, like I had mentioned before, that were placed into the coffin.
Um as betting and uh as absorbency and um there’s lots of decoration as well.

Utilitarian and Decorative Design Elements in Coffins

 

[1:07:22] It’s not all utilitarian, it’s not all um you know, just function.
There’s a lot of design here too.
So, um there are lead tacks that serve a poor purpose to hold uh textiles onto the exterior of a coffin, but they also um could be used to kind of make nice designs.
Um This was something that was stylistically very popular uh around the mid 19th century.
And um it looks to me like it’s ch or th that somebody tried to um etch out in lead on one coffin.
And I think we spent quite a bit of time trying to actually figure out what that said.

[1:08:10] So um it’s, you know, these designs could be very personalized, which I think is really interesting and really nice to see um.

[1:08:20] This uh screw cover that um it’s called a diamond screw cover or a diamond screw plate.
We found so many of these, which makes me think that um they were being used at least by one, one cabinet maker, if not a few in the area.
Um because they were just everywhere and uh it’s a diamond plate that would be used to cover the screw.
So the screw would actually go through the diamond plate and then a little cap is affixed to the top of the screw to cover it just to make it look prettier.
Um, and these little caps were all over the place.
Um, the coffin linings, uh, ranged quite a bit.
Some of them were sort of a coarser cloth, um, tacked down with little nails and, you know, we found some that were almost like a, like a satiny material, um, you know, very, uh.

[1:09:20] They looked very expensive. You know, they looked like very, uh, fancy.
Like somebody really splurged on some of these aspects of their loved ones. Burials.
Um, oh, and again, uh, wood shavings, just wood shavings everywhere.
Um, this is something that, uh, cabinet makers.
Anyone who’s ever done, woodworking knows you have wood shavings and wood, uh, sawdust everywhere.
And if you’re making a coffin, if you can put that to good use, then, you know, by all means it can be used within as betting and it very much was.

[1:10:01] Um I think one of my favorite aspects of what we did find is burial garments.
Um And I can’t show you any from the old North crypt.
Um because I can’t show them without uh showing human remains, which I I’m not doing.
Um But these uh are a comparative sample that uh I’ve used the uh cryptic Christchurch Spittle Fields, which is in London.
Um as a comparative example, pretty much through all of my research because it’s been, it’s actually remarkable how close a lot of the aspects of these burials and uh the crypt at the North church are very similar.
Um The dates of youth are almost spot on uh as to the ones at the old North.
Um And so this, uh we did see quite a bit of um shrouds mostly fragmentary.
Um and a burial shroud would have been uh a soft material. Um.

[1:11:08] Sorry, something um like Muslin or cotton.
Um And a lot of bonnets, you know, not, not just on Children, sometimes adults as well.
Um In one instance, we saw an individual that had uh what appeared to be a coat with buttons.

[1:11:28] Um And I think uh one of the most remarkable things that we came across that, um, you know, we all really kind of gasped when we saw this and it, it kind of took us back.
Uh, there was an individual, um, who was incredibly well preserved, just, you know, looked, looked as though they had died very recently.
Um, and they were wearing woolen stockings, um, that went up to about the knee, and, um, just seeing these stockings, you know, it, it, they look like socks, they just look like socks that anyone would have and knowing how old this burial was when this individual lived and seeing this part of humanity, um It was, it was really moving, it was a very, very cool thing to see.

Handmade Burial Garments and Personalized Touches

 

[1:12:22] Um, and so, um, and a lot of these garments, um at the time, they would have been made by family.
So, you know, if, if a family knew that someone was ill, they may have time to prepare, um, they may um have to make them hastily.
If someone died, they would, you know, make burial garments uh, quickly, it was not as common for people to be buried in their everyday clothes, although it did happen.
Um And so some of the other things we found, um, another one that was really memorable, there was a child um with a gold ring.

[1:13:09] Um placed on their, on their little finger and they uh were kind of placed in a, a burial pose. With their hands upon their chest.
And I know when we saw this tomb, um we could just see this sparkling kind of off in the corner and one of us shined a flashlight on it and seeing that it was a gold ring just beautiful.
Um And it was, you know, again, just the humanity thinking that someone loved this child and left this ring with them to be buried.
And it was really, it was a very wonderful, beautiful thing to see.
Um And so.

[1:13:49] I think I, I’m gonna leave you with uh this last find that um I take no credit for because this was found uh after we had left.
And um this is a public archaeology laboratory out of Rhode Island was doing archaeological monitoring.
So after the, the tombs had been closed with their temporary doors, um we had left to kind of compile our notes and download our photos and.

[1:14:20] Um pal was there while the floor was being lowered.
Um And they were monitoring just to make sure that there were no artifacts coming up, no burials encountered.
Um And they were there for a little while after that.
And um as the floor was being lowered, this fragments of this gravestone came out of one of the tomb walls.
Um And basically what it shows is that uh it’s um reuse.
So at some point, this gravestone was either damaged or it was um maybe the stone maker made an error and it was a cast off. It was a seconds basically.
Um And the stone was reused. And so it was stuck in with all the field stones and bricks and things like that.
Um As construction fill and they found these pieces and pal was able able to piece it back together.
And from what I understand it’s, um, now in the open, open and empty tomb that has always been open and empty in recent memory.
Um, so that it’s available to see on tours.
And, um, yeah, and so that is another one of the wonderful finds that was kind of a last minute surprise.

[1:15:40] Um And so I guess that’s another good reminder for everybody to please come visit the old North church and take their tours of the crypt, um, and see the remarkable restoration work that’s been done.
Um I’m so so happy that this was done. It just warms my heart.
So I want to encourage all of you to please do that.

Wrapping up with Jane Lyden Rousseau and Old North

Jake:
[1:16:06] Well, that about wraps it up for this week to learn more about Jane Lyden Rousseau and her work at Old North.
And to find more information about Old North illuminates digital speaker series.
Check out this week’s show notes at hubor.com/two 91.
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Music

Jake:
[1:16:59] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.