From Norwich CT-
Several years ago, Christ Episcopal Church property warden Stanley Stanley was working on the gas furnace in the dirt basement when he felt a poke in the back.
He reached around and pulled a human femur out of the dirt, then a rib bone.
"I didn't go digging around there anymore," said Stanley, now retired at age 82.
On Tuesday, several volunteers were in the church basement, but instead of digging up bones they were after some of the best-preserved Colonial-era headstones in New England.
Under the direction of historical cemetery expert David Oat, volunteers from the church and the Norwich Historical Society combed through the Christ Church cellar with flashlights and a hand truck.
Dozens of bodies were buried in a parish cemetery on that land over the century before the current church was built from 1846 to 1848, and the hand-carved headstones now stashed in the cellar at one time marked their graves.
A pamphlet on church history offers a succinct version of the story. The land on lower Washington Street where Christ Church now stands was donated to the parish in 1734 by Benijah Bushnell. The first church was built there, but eventually the parish moved to Main Street. In 1847 the parish decided - in a vote that literally split the parish in two - to move back to the original plot "once the burying ground was removed."
More here-
http://www.theday.com/article/20110629/NWS01/306299907/1018
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