Sticks and stones

If you're like me, every overturned tree is an opportunity for treasure. I can't look at a tangle of freshly unearthed roots without imagining a hoard of ancient coins or, better yet, some mysterious bones snarled up in there.

Of course, that sort of thing is too good to be true.

... Or is it?

Yeah, that's right.

No, it wasn't in Bucks County. (Sigh.) But still.

Katie Carbo made a spooky Halloween’s eve discovery in New Haven, Connecticut: a centuries-old skeleton unearthed by a giant oak tree overturned by Hurricane Sandy.

Visible among the roots of the tree is the back of skull, upside down, with its mouth open (pictured). It is still connected to a spine and rib cage. 

The tree fell at around 6 p.m. Monday near the peak of Superstorm Sandy. A stone marker at the foot of the tree (pictured) identifies it as the “Lincoln Oak,” planted in 1909 on the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

A local artist, Silas Finch, saw it fall. He started rooting around [Heh. See what they did there? — Rayna] in the root ball upended along with the tree looking for old coins. He even came back Tuesday morning to dig some more.

At one point he found what he thought was a human bone. He called his friend, a fellow artist and New Haven historian named Robert Greenberg. 

“No way there could be human bones. It’s an animal bone.” Finch recalled Greenberg telling him.

Later, Greenberg returned to the scene and, chastened, announced a hypothesis: The skeleton could have been a victim of smallpox, interred in what amounted to a “mass burial site.”

As evidence, he cited a passage in the New Haven Green chapter of the book, “Historical Sketches of New Haven.” The book describes how some notables were buried in the walled-off cemetery behind the Center Church on the Green. Others were buried in the rest of the Upper Green, apparently with great density.

“Sometimes, at the dead of night, apart from the others, the victims of smallpox were fearfully hid here,” the book reads. “The ground was filled with graves between the Church and College Street; sixteen bodies having been found within sixteen square feet.”

The last bodies were buried there in the 1700s, Greenberg said. In 1821, the stones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery, and the ground was raised to level off the Green. The bodies remained behind.

Cops planned to guard the bones tonight on the graveyard shift.

[Groan.]