Construction Work Reveals 19th-Century Family Cemetery

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE—A recent building boom in Tennessee has uncovered many family cemeteries, including one at Nashville’s Aquinas College. The Tennessean reports that the small, nineteenth-century cemetery had been covered by a parking lot. A headstone at the site recorded the name of Charles Bosley, who died in 1870 at the age of 93. Archaeologists found a total of ten graves and five grave markers at the site, including stones for Bosley’s wife and daughter, who died in 1825 at the age of one. Historic documents revealed that the college had been built on Bosley’s farmland. Bosley himself was remembered in a 1963 newspaper article as “a man who was both rugged and rich.” Tennessee state historian and director of the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University said that as the suburbs of Nashville expanded, Bosley’s influence was largely forgotten. His descendants thought the burials had been moved off the family land. To read more about archaeology in the region, go to "Return to the Trail of Tears."