English Colonists Graveyard At 1010 Girard St.

[gto250us]

Anyone know anythin more about the old "Black earth" graves found at the site in the 80's? very intersting since there is no record of English in the area in the 1600. Although most European who were in the area at the time were just flat out lost.

Not only did they determine the extent of the old City Cemetery site which had been encroached upon by City buildings and roads, but an even more astonishing find was made.

...The graves which had been placed on the site in the late 1800's intruded on earlier graves that were of a nature that showed them to be from a much earlier time period. About 40 of these earlier graves were excavated in a small portion of the Jeff Davis site. The common characteristics of these graves were the orientation of graves east to west (the head), and body was wrapped in a shroud and buried without a coffin. Because the graves were filled with fresh soil of high organic nature they are called 'black earth graves'.

Ceramic pieces found in the black earth graves date from the 1600's and they are a type of ceramics used by English colonists of that period. The black earth graves were mandated by a law of the City of London in 1563 (rescinded in 1685) for persons who died of disease. The nature of the burial was designed to accelerate decomposition and retard spread of disease.

Further excavations found that the graves were aligned within an area bound by a moat ten feet wide and ten feet deep that is similar to a colonial pattern found in Charleston, South Carolina, and dating from the same period of English colonization.

Was there an English colony here on Buffalo Bayou in the 1600's? If so, it is unknown to history at this time