Bosnia, Iraq And . . . St. George

It boggles the mind to think that no one remembered there was a large mass grave there:

The cars came and went yesterday at the St. George municipal parking lot, where it might have been business as usual were it not for a small group of mostly unnoticed archaeologists unearthing the remains of 19th-century immigrants in one corner of the blacktop.

After digging and patching up parts of the parking lot for months, the team has finally located the spot where an unknown number of dead, most of them thought to be Irish or German immigrants killed by disease, were believed buried in unmarked graves three and four deep in the mid-1800s, before ever getting a crack at life in a new world.

The finding of a concentrated area of undisturbed skeletons is considered crucial to establishing how much of the four-acre parking lot will need to be preserved when the city and state begin construction of a $109 million courthouse there.

The County Clerk’s office on nearby Stuyvesant Place houses most of the borough’s public records, but the parking lot burial ground may offer its own archive: A glimpse into the ill-fated lives of immigrants struck down by typhus and yellow fever and rejected by residents fearful of such devastating diseases.

The small team of archaeologists and the state declined to give details yesterday about how many bones or what kind of skeletons are being unearthed at the lot, in a corner located closest to Hyatt Street and St. Mark’s Place.

Connecticut-based Historical Perspectives is conducting the dig, and a spokeswoman for the State Dormitory Authority said the remains are being treated with the “utmost respect and dignity.”

“They are finding the edges of the burial ground. They are finding human remains,” said Claudia Hutton. “We are not trying to dig up the cemetery, we are trying to determine the edges.”