Burr Lane: A Dog With A Bone - Part II

The Tippet Pipe Found in 1969.
(Copyright 2014 President & Fellows of Harvard College
969-37-50122 and 975-34-10/52976)

The dog was covered in spring mud, after the rains he was always coming home filthy with sticks and old roots. This day was different, as he bounded into the house he had a large ball of some sort, as his owner bent over to retrieve the mess from the dog’s mouth he was shocked to discover that it was a human skull. 

This was 1968, and when Police Chief Daniel Keleher arrived, he knew it would be impossible to locate the rest of the body given the provenance of the dog’s mouth. Placing the skull on the seat of his cruiser, Keleher took it to the old Police Station on Revere Street and put in on the top shelve of the closet in his office. There it sat next to another skull that had been discovered behind the Canton Corner Cemetery. It seems that Keleher had more than a few skeletons in his closet. A year later, Keleher put two and two together and realized the archeologists at the Peabody Museum who had arrived at Burr Lane might want to see the skull that the dog had unearthed a year earlier.

It took a few days to get the necessary permissions from Mrs. Eli Withington, but after some brief negotiations the Peabody archeologist, Dena Dincauze, began her work. What the neighborhood children had uncovered was the Burr Lane Burying Ground. Children had begun the work, but the scientists needed to figure out the boundaries and secure the remains from exposure and deterioration.

Skulls, mandibles, rib cages, hands and feet… all were eroding out of the side of the sandpit. All of the graves were oriented in an east-west fashion with the head laying to the east. The hands were in the pelvic cavity with the right hand above the left except the right thumb below the left hand. On the left ankle was a copper or brass straight pin, which preserved a small portion of a shroud of course linen. In the soil, careful excavation revealed coffin nails in the dirt closely fitting the body. Portions of thick pine planking preserved sections of the coffins.

A woman’s grave was excavated and one of the neighborhood boys found a dotted slipware cup that dated to the 18^th century. More graves were excavated through the course of the weeks ahead. The site became a classroom for the Harvard students who ultimately excavated the complete remains of two individuals and parts of six others. At the same time, the kids were also digging, and the scene must have been surreal.

Key to dating the site was the small pipe that Stephen Turley had found along with the slipware cup. Likely the graves of Jonathan George and Simon George were the earliest, placing the site’s date of first use at 1738. The Harvard archeological team uncovered a rough footstone in place above one grave, but all other stones seemed to have been lost over time.

A Sketch of the Archeological Work in 1998

With Burr Lane to the north, this area is defined by typical fieldstone walls and a meandering cartpath - part of an ancient Indian trail known as the Quantum Path, the Southerly portion connecting to Burr Lane. Historically there was once an orchard, Indian dwellings, and possibly a small meetinghouse.

The land lay untouched until 1998, when Peter Stockus, the landowner submitted plans to the Canton Planning Board for a small residential subdivision on the site. This author reminded Stockus that his new subdivision was the site of the Burr Lane Burying Ground and as such a new archeological investigation might be in order. Always a gentleman and a good citizen of Canton, Stockus hired Joyce Clements to perform an archeological assessment.

Stockus sat atop a Caterpillar excavator and slowly stripped the soil from the area as Clemenst carefully watched. On the last day of the work, at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 20^th a femur was exposed on the western part of the property. The archeologist got to her knees and carefully began brushing away the sand. A second bone appeared and smaller bones were exposed. The following Monday the real work began. This time, history would be preserved in place. By March 30^th all was secure and 18^th century was tucked back into the ground.

The Peabody Museum is an imposing brick building just outside Harvard Yard. To see the artifacts related to Burr Lane requires permission from the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council. Once inside, the security is fairly strict and you are ushered into a basement viewing room. A staff person rolls a cart on which sits a large wooden tray. Latex gloved hands, and one by one the grave goods are handled. A small plastic bag contains a tiny fragment of a burial shroud cloth. Roughly woven this was once wrapped around the body in a coffin and fastened with a small copper pin. There are not many items that were taken from Burr Lane – a small handled cup, a fragment of pottery, a lead shot, and twenty coffin nails.

The most amazing item, however, is the small pipe broken into two pieces. The pipe is stained inside from the tobacco that once flowed through the stem. There is a small set of maker’s initials and a cartouche on the side of the bowl. This pipe was made by R. Tippet. The Tippet family was probably the most important pipemakers in the late 17^th through early 18^th centuries. Three generations all hailed from Bristol, England and this pipe was made sometime between the years 1660 - 1722.

Jeanne MacLeod was ten years old, and vividly recalls the small pipe in her hands. “The one thing I remember – the pipe, we were playing with it for days. One kid dropped it and it broke the stem and we all were quite upset since we knew it was an ancient artifact.” Today, Jeanne lives in Hilton Head, SC. “Talking about this today, more than forty-five years ago, the memory of the day comes flooding back.”

All in all, the Peabody has 18 items that were recovered from Burr Lane. There are two full human skeletons and perhaps parts of six to ten others plus six artifacts. The remains are stored respectfully in another location, yet one day they may find their way back to their original resting place.

So while there are human remains of our ancestors safely tucked away on shelves in Cambridge, here in Canton the Burr Lane Burying Ground is largely intact, thanks to Peter Stockus and the advocacy of the local and state historical commissions as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The work done in 1998 yields evidence of fourteen additional “features” or grave shafts. Preliminary reports at the time estimated a total of thirteen individuals interred in graves. In some cases the graves had been disturbed, and in others they were wholly intact. Also, a skull had been found on the topsoil as well as fragments of coffins and nails. Some of the heads were situated with their head to the west and others to the east.

Clements worked carefully to recover the boundaries of the cemetery. One of the conclusions made was that the graves exposed during the work in 1998 suggested two family groups within the burials. This makes sense historically since Huntoon’s History of Canton tells us that four members of Simon George’s family are buried here and four members of Jacob Wilbor’s family are here. Who else is buried here, we may never know. Huntoon tells us that there are Indians, blacks, and children. Forensic evidence suggests that in addition to Native Americans, there are also African American traits found in the early skeletal remains. Jacob Wilbor may be Native or black American: his wife Mary Wills Wilbor was the daughter of Nuff Wills ‘a negro’. Also, we do not know definitively where Seymour Burr is buried. There are several children buried at Burr Lane and the archeology confirms this as well. MacLeod also remembers the skeleton of a dog, and that may tie into the reference of Simon George’s dog following him into the afterlife.

Today, the Burying Ground is part of the Withington Circle Subdivision and is protected under a permanent preservation restriction through the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The graves that have been preserved on-site are contained within a 2,792 square foot easement on Lot 5. Access to the cemetery is preserved through a ten-foot wide path that runs along the property line. There is no sign, and the property is private so there is no trespassing allowed. We do know that no dogs or children will ever disturb this site again. And, there is room reserved for the reburial of the remains in the custody of the Peabody Museum if ever they are released for internment.  Peter Stockus was awarded the Massachusetts Preservation Award in 1999.

Special thanks to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Jeremy Comeau, Canton Planning Board, and Gill Solomon, President of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council.