Nearly 500 souls were removed from Philly’s old First Baptist Church burial ground seven years ago. When will they be reburied?

Israel Morris was 25 years old when he died on Dec. 9, 1754.

He was buried in the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia cemetery, at Second and Arch, just across the street from where Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag.

Today, Israel Morris’ remains, along with those of nearly 500 other Philadelphians, are stored in a climate-controlled basement in Camden, waiting for a final resting place — again.

The saga over how those bones have been treated began when a small snarl of loose skeletal remains was first unearthed in the fall of 2016. That’s when workers began digging to lay a foundation for a new, 10-story luxury apartment building, now completed and known as 218 Arch.

Over the last seven years, the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, a nonprofit group of archaeologists who advocate for more respectful treatment of remains buried in historic or forgotten cemeteries all over the city, and Mark Zecca, a former city lawyer with a passion for historic preservation, have wrangled in Philadelphia Orphans’ Court over the handling of the remains with PMC Property Group, the apartment developer, and Rutgers University-Camden, which has led research on the remains.

The court case has been resolved but delays remain because the protocols for burial have not been completed.

Concerns about the exhumed graves come at a time of broader scrutiny over institutions and how they treat human remains. The Mütter Museum faced criticism for holding on to remains of Native Americans, and Penn Museum was criticized for its skull collection and using the remains of a MOVE bombing victim in anthropology classes.

The discovery has raised questions about how Philadelphia officials interpret and enforce existing laws concerning old burial grounds throughout the city. It has prompted discussions on whether stronger laws are needed.

And the legal entanglements have caused many to ponder what it means when Philadelphia’s colonial-era history, its most famous industry, comes face-to-face with a city eager for 21st-century development.

“All I know is that I want to put these people back in the ground,” said Kimberlee Sue Moran, an associate teaching professor and director of forensics at Rutgers University-Camden, whose team has been analyzing the remains since 2017.

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The remains found were initially to be moved by the First Baptist Church in 1860 about the time the church relocated to Broad and Arch Streets. The church is now at 17th and Sansom Streets with a small congregation and has not taken an active role in the case. The Rev. James Williams, the current pastor, has not responded for requests to comment.

The discovery of the remains has revealed sharp divisions between private archeologists and the city.

“The city is enabling developers in this situation to destroy an irreplaceable aspect of Philadelphia history,” Douglas B. Mooney, president of the archaeological forum, told The Inquirer. Mooney, appointed by then-Mayor James Kenney, was a member of the city’s Historic Preservation Task Force at the time of the discovery of the cemetery but is currently not a member.

“What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to not upset developers. The developers run the show in Philadelphia, and the mayor and others don’t want to upset them.”

When the first small group of bones was unearthed in the fall of 2016, a tipster called police. The Medical Examiner’s office determined the remains historical and not victims of a homicide. Construction continued.

“The city is enabling developers in this situation to destroy an irreplaceable aspect of Philadelphia history.”

More bones were found in February 2017, leading to a chaotic, haphazard, two-week exhumation by volunteer scientists in March.

When even more remains were found three months later, PMC Property Group hired AECOM, a private, professional archaeological firm, to excavate hundreds more remains, including many in coffins, between July and September.

AECOM produced a report about its work for PMC that detailed how burials were stacked on top of each other, with 18th-century burials found deep below 19th-century graves.

”It is AECOM’s interpretation of the evidence presented that the individuals responsible for the historical relocation of the FBCP Cemetery were either unaware of the presence of deeper graves below the 19th-century burials or were disinclined to exert the massive effort required to retrieve them using only the hand excavation tools that were available at the time,” the report said.

PMC filed AECOM’s report with Orphan’s Court as part of the public record of the case.

All along, historic preservation advocates had been urging city officials to order construction halted so that a larger archaeological survey could be done.

The Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, which has researched historic burial grounds around the city, and Zecca, a former city lawyer with experience at both the Philadelphia Historical Commission and the Department of Licenses and Inspections, asked city officials to take action.

The city chose to allow construction to continue.

» READ MORE: More bones reported at Arch Street site; city declines to halt construction

In 2017, witnesses told The Inquirer that some of the First Baptist bones were taken to a landfill in Conshohocken, a claim that PMC has denied.

Mooney and Rutgers researchers disagree, citing the volume of soil removed before the archeological excavation began in 2017.

Philadelphia officials at that time argued that the city could not stop construction because the cemetery was no longer an active cemetery and the land was private property.

“The only time the city is compelled to get involved in a matter like this is if city property is involved or a public facility,” then-city attorney Leonard F. Reuter told the court at the time, during a hearing to permit PMC to remove the bodies and bring them to Rutgers while both construction and the dig were occuring.

“The issue is not whether the city has the authority, but rather whether the city decides to use the authority.”

Reuter also said no laws governed a situation where a cemetery was believed to have been relocated more than 150 years earlier. In a recent email, a spokesperson for the city’s legal department said that the city still continues to hold that position today.

PMC Property Group has maintained in court filings that it has always treated the remains with respect.

Neither Courtney Schultz, the lawyer for PMC, nor representatives from the developer responded to emails.

A standoff remains between Mooney and Zecca against the city over whether the city can stop developers from digging up old cemeteries.

The city’s position is that if it’s not an active cemetery and is on private property, current laws don’t apply.

Zecca spent 20 years in the city’s law department, once served as counsel to the historical commission, headed code enforcement, and gave legal advice to the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspection.

“L&I absolutely has authority to protect human remains during construction,” Zecca said recently. “The issue is not whether the city has the authority, but rather whether the city decides to use the authority.”

Mooney, the archeological forum’s president, said the city has been dealing with the issue of the haphazard handling of human graves at construction sites for hundreds of years.

The Philadelphia Archaeological Forum believes one way to prevent future accidental disturbance of old grave sites is to consult the forum’s online burial ground database map that shows the locations of dozens of cemeteries and burial grounds around the city, from West Philadelphia to Germantown, North Philadelphia, Strawberry Mansion, Kensington, and Frankford.

“Ideally, the city should pass an ordinance that requires any new construction managers to consult our map and determine whether there’s a chance there’s an old cemetery that could be disturbed by any proposed new construction,” Mooney said.

He said if a cemetery falls within a new development, the city should require the developer to take all appropriate steps to make sure none of those burials is disturbed. If that can’t be avoided, then a developer should “have them respectfully relocated to a new burial location.”

“We believe these are fellow Philadelphians, when they died, in all good faith they were laid to rest, not to be disturbed in the future,” Mooney said. " Yet they are constantly being disturbed.”

The city’s law department, in a recent email, said Mooney and others are asking the mayor’s office to change its policies, which is not its role. “This is a question for City Council.”

» READ MORE: Race on to excavate huge number of historic graves found on building site

There are the remains of 491 people stored in boxes in Camden. Some are partial, others whole.

Moran, of Rutgers, and scientists from the Mütter Museum Research Institute and experts at other universities have been conducting research on the diseases that afflicted the 18th- and 19th-century Philadelphians found at the burial site and what the burial customs can tell us about the social classes of those buried at First Baptist.

“It could be that this was one of the first church cemeteries to be truly integrated.”

Moran said, for the most part, the majority of the people buried were from the United Kingdom, many from Wales. She said it did appear that some of those buried may have had African ancestry. But DNA testing would is needed and will be done.

“It could be that this was one of the first church cemeteries to be truly integrated,” she said.

The scientists catalogued headstones and studied burial customs, examining the style of caskets and whether the deceased were buried in shrouds or clothing.

As for the debates in court about how the remains should be treated, Moran said:

“I definitely agree we need to have better laws and better regulations to make it very clear what — researchers can and cannot do.”

Anna Dhody, then a curator at the Mütter Museum Research Institute, took part in a volunteer effort by scientists to recover as many remains as possible in a two-week period in March 2017.

“These are our ancestors. This is our history,“ she told The Inquirer at the time. “We can learn so much from these bones — about the yellow fever epidemic in 1793, the cholera epidemic of 1849.”

Dhody, who did not respond to recent requests for comment, has a website about her research.

In addition to learning about diseases that affected early Philadelphians, scientists said, the bones, paired with historical records, could also shed light on what everyday life was like in Colonial Philadelphia.

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have the time to spend with [researching] all of these individuals from our past,” said Moran, at Rutgers-Camden.

The researchers studied bones, teeth, and any remaining tissue that may reveal biomarkers of Alzheimer’s, the immune responses to diseases, and other conditions.

Moran said information gathered from the study has been stored in databases and will continue to be used for research for years to come.

She said every sample of tissue or bone, and every textile or funerary object has been reunited with the proper remains, except for small bone segments that were destroyed by DNA sampling.

Scientists have not yet determined what killed 25-year-old Israel Morris.

The studies by Moran, Dhody, and other scientists can be found at the Arch Street Project (archstbones.org).

Officials at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia, through the courts, have notified property owner PMC that there is space within Section 112, a section devoted to First Baptist, where some of the church members’ remains were relocated in 1860.

Now, the grounds at Mount Moriah are simply waiting for the church members whose remains were discovered during the apartment construction.

It is now up to PMC, guided by AECOM, to decide when the remains will be moved to Mount Moriah. An attorney for PMC has not responded to emails with a definitive date on when the remains will be reburied.

Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello’s court order required PMC to issue legal notices at least two weeks before it plans to rebury the First Baptist remains.

Last Monday, Zecca checked those notices and wrote in an email to The Inquirer that : “.. the only notice I see is the one announcing a planned reinterment for January 19, 2024, that did not happen. Also, the developer has not filed any notice with the court stating that reinterment has happened, which the developer is required to do (pursuant to the last court decree) after the developer completes reinterment. "

Moran, of Rutgers, said she was hopeful for a summer reburial.