Christ's Roman Catholic Church and its accomanying graveyard were originally located at York Street and South Street in New Haven. The church no longer exists and neither does South Street. Yale-New Haven Hospital's Emergency Department ambulance entrance now occupies the land. The church and its graveyard had largely been forgotten until a 2011 construction project to expand the emergency department unearthed human remains. Once law enforcement had ruled out homicide, archeologists from UCONN and Yale University were called in to investigate and the side was finally determined to be a graveyard. The memorials added here were transcribed from a list provided by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford.

Below is the text of an article published in the New Haven Register on December 7, 2011 which explains everything in great detail.

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Historians, scientists unraveling mystery of 'forgotten' New Haven cemetery (By Pamela McLoughlin, Register Staff, Dec 17, 2011)

NEW HAVEN -- A slice of local history that includes a forgotten Catholic cemetery, unidentified human remains and a touch of crime and scandal is coming into focus for a team of archeologists and historians. It's unfolding as a result of human bones, skulls and teeth found at a Yale-New Haven Hospital construction site last summer. Work was stopped when a long bone was discovered during excavation. State archeologist Nicholas Bellantoni was called in, and students under his direction proceeded with hand tools to carefully remove dirt along a drainage channel on Davenport Avenue. There were surprises: they found the skeletal remains of four individuals, three stacked on top of one another. There were no coffins, but there were nails and screws in a coffin-like pattern. Then there was mystery: Why were they there?

Once homicide was ruled out, Bellantoni and his team went into action. The team includes a few area historians to piece together what had gone on above ground and two osteologists to analyze the bones found underground -- Gary Aronsen, who runs the biological anthropology lab at Yale University, and Sarah Brownlee. Five months after the find, the puzzle is coming together nicely for the team, although there are more pieces to be found. The results so far were presented recently to members of Fort Nathan Hale Restoration Projects Inc., as part of a program to inform residents of local history. History sleuths Howard Eckels, a retired state trooper who specializes in primary document searches, and Anthony Griego, a retired police sergeant and security guard at Y-NH and determined the site was once a Catholic cemetery. The place was forgotten because the gravestones had been moved and the trail was lost through many changes in church hierarchy. Griego had tried to tell folks for years that the site was once a Catholic cemetery -- he had read about it in an old church history book a friend bought at a tag sale in the early 1970s. One of those times was when human skulls were unearthed at the hospital during construction in the late 1970s, but most people were skeptical. Now they know Griego was right. Eckels explained the gripping history like this: The site was home to Christ's Church and its neighboring cemetery. It was the first Catholic church in New Haven and the second in the state. Prior to that, the city's 200 Catholics had no home and were served by a priest who traveled from Hartford. The church was built in 1833 at the juncture of Davenport Avenue, York Street, Cedar Street and a street that no longer exists -- South Street -- and served all of New Haven County, Bridgeport and Middletown. It was a church wrought with hard luck: the organ galley collapsed during dedication in 1834, killing two and injuring many; the church's chalice and vestments were stolen; a grave robber was caught twice in the act. Then, in 1848, the church burned down, determined to be arson. The congregation moved and was renamed St. Mary's, then moved again to its current home on Hillhouse Avenue.

By 1851, the cemetery -- now determined by Eckels to have 608 buried there -- was full. It was a time when 50 percent of the deaths were of those 10 and under and 26 percent were those one-year-old and under.

About 10 years later, as Catholic churches began going up in rapid succession because of an influx of immigrants, many of them Irish, St. John's the Evangelist built their church on the former Christ's Church site. The priest wanted the headstones removed because he thought they made the property look unkempt. But the parishioners got a court injunction to prevent it. The next priest wanted to do the same, but parishioners again opposed the plan. A third priest moved the gravestones to the fence line of the church and then placed some of the stones in a memorial. Then, one day, the gravestones disappeared. The priest told parishioners they had been sent to St. Bernard's Cemetery, but Eckels has only found three there. The whereabouts of the stones remains a mystery. "We're not looking to place blame," Eckels said of the missing stones. "Part of the mystery is how the cemetery got forgotten." Christ's Church was built under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Boston, so the Archdiocese of Hartford, now in charge of the area, was not responsible for the cemetery oversight in any way, Eckels said. It is likely, Eckels said, that all the remains except the four found near the new emergency room entrance have turned to dust. But no one is going to disturb the area to find out. The team now knows a lot more about the remains, and they say it is possible, with further testing, that they can find some living relatives. A list of the 608 people buried in the cemetery is available at the New Haven Historical Society.

Brownlee, displaying pictures of some of the bones on a screen, said the remains already have told them a lot about the individuals and how they lived. "There are so many things we can tell about a person's life from their skeleton," she said. "Any serious event will leave a trace on your skeleton." Aside from age and size, they can determine health, lifestyle, diet and more. The profiles belonging to the bones so far: two females, one 35-45 who probably had a heavy workload by the compression in her spine, the other 70 years old, toothless, who had a hip problem and worked a lot with her hands. The remains of two men indicate one was 30-35-years-old, very healthy, with very little tooth wear and strong muscles -- leaving the team to wonder how he died. The other, in his 70s and the most interesting to the osteologists, had an unusual healed fracture of the first veterbrae -- in other words, once had a broken back and a limited range of motion because of compressed vertebrae. There is a bad infection in his left leg -- an infection still active -- and a spreading of that might have been what killed him.

Should any more remains appear, Bellantoni will be the first one called. He said the hospital has been great about respecting the proper recovery of any remains and so has the Archdiocese of Hartford.

While at the site last summer, when they realized they were dealing with a cemetery, the archdiocese sent a monsignor to bless the remains and the archeological team. When the work is done, the remains will be reburied in a proper Catholic fashion, Bellantoni said. "This has excited the scientific community big-time," Eckels said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said the church was at Davenport Avenue and South Street. It was at York and South.

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