For years, family members have searched for the grave of Samuel Miles, one of Philly’s former mayors. Then they learned about remains uncovered in Old City.

Andrea Miles remembers how she first learned that archaeologists had recovered the remains of hundreds of people buried in a 310-year-old cemetery in Old City.

It was in the middle of the night, in October 2017, and Miles wasn’t able to sleep.

She went online and saw an Inquirer story that the graves of nearly 400 people had been exhumed from the historic cemetery of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia.

The graves, from the 1700s and 1800s, were unearthed during construction of a 10-story apartment building at 218 Arch St. The property had been a burial ground between 1707 and 1860.

When First Baptist Church moved from Old City to Broad and Arch in 1855, officials arranged to have the burials at Second and Arch transferred to Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia in 1860.

“I sat straight up in my bed when I realized the location,” Andrea Miles recalled.

Miles wondered: Was it possible the mystery of why she had not been able to find the grave of Col. Samuel Miles, her seventh great-grandfather — that was supposed to have been relocated to Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia — could have been solved?

Col. Samuel Miles was a Philadelphia mayor and an American Revolutionary War officer who corresponded with George Washington. He also was a deacon at First Baptist Church.

“I knew that was the church that he was affiliated with, and I started crying,” said Andrea, who lives in State College. “And to find out that it [the church cemetery] was just bulldozed — it was devastating.”

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For years, Andrea Miles and her father were on a mission to visit the gravesites of all of their great-grandfathers, including Samuel Miles, who was born in Whitemarsh Township in 1739 and died in 1805.

“My father was into genealogy and had hoped to visit every one of his grandfathers’ graves, all the way to Col. Samuel Miles,” said Andrea Miles. “We found the graves of all the Miles grandfathers, except the colonel’s.”

So, in 2008, Miles and her parents, Floyd and Naomi Miles, from Coalport, traveled to Philadelphia to Mount Moriah in search of their Revolutionary War officer ancestor.

There is a First Baptist section at Mount Moriah, but all the Miles family found on their visit were knee-high weeds and frustration.

They never found Col. Miles’ grave.

Samuel Miles was not only Philadelphia’s 46th mayor, from 1790 to 1791, and an American Revolutionary War officer, he was a businessman and a University of Pennsylvania trustee.

Miles fought in the French and Indian War in his teens and was promoted to captain before he turned 20. He was a colonel at the start of the American Revolution.

During the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, Miles was captured by the British. While imprisoned, he was promoted to brigadier general of Pennsylvania regiments and was released in a prisoner exchange in 1778.

In business, Miles co-founded a sugar refinery on Vine Street in 1783. He joined Philadelphia banker Robert Morris in financing the voyage of the Empress of China, to Canton in 1784, the first time an American vessel would trade with China.

Morris was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and as the story goes, went with George Washington to ask Betsy Ross to sew the first American flag.

In 1791, Miles co-founded the Centre Furnace iron works in State College and later started another iron works at Harmony Forge, an area that became known as Milesburg.

Letters between Samuel Miles and George Washington are preserved at the National Archives in Washington and at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

Today, however, Andrea Miles is still not sure where the colonel is buried.

Andrea Miles visited Rutgers-Camden in late 2017, where forensics professor Kimberlee Sue Moran and her team were studying the First Baptist Cemetery remains. The research is called the Arch Street Project.

Floyd Miles’ health was failing by this time. He died in 2019, at age 90, aware that the uncovered First Baptist graves might provide answers about Samuel.

Prior to the Rutgers visit, Andrea had written to Moran, saying her family would donate DNA samples to help identify the colonel.

She also told Moran that Samuel Miles had been shot in the foot during the war and hoped that knowledge of that injury could also help. So far, Moran said, researchers have not yet discovered Samuel.

“I’m hopeful if anybody is going to find the answer, it’s going to be Kimberlee [ Moran],” Andrea said. “I’m so impressed with her and the team and the respect and dignity they put into this project.”

“My father was one of 12 siblings,” Andrea added. “This is something that our whole family has been involved in. There are hundreds of cousins, and we all wonder and long for the day we know where he is.”