It’s a funeral nearly 250 years in the making.
The long-lost remains of what’s likely more than 40 Revolutionary War soldiers will be returned to an upstate town for a proper burial in a military graveyard Friday, officials said.
The fallen Army officers — whose bones were unearthed by chance during a construction project seven years ago — will be laid to rest in caskets at Lake George’s Battlefield Park as part of a sprawling 700,000 memorial project.
Construction crews stumbled on an 18th-century cemetery below Courtland Street in Lake George in 2019, and archaeologists later recovered what’s believed to be the remains of 44 soldiers.
The bones were later transported to the New York State Museum in Albany, where researchers painstakingly reconstructed the stories of the dead from thousands of recovered fragments.
Julie Weatherwax, a New York State Museum bioarcheology technician, said she spent months examining teeth to determine how many people they’d likely dug up.
“I spent the better part of a year putting together over 800 loose teeth and just trying to recreate the dental arcades for people,” Weatherwax told cbs6albany.com. “And that’s how we actually got the minimum number of 44 individuals was from the dental arcades I was able to put back together.”
A forensic artist also reconstructed the face of what’s believed to be a teenage soldier— offering a personal peek at the people who died while fighting for US independence, the museum said in a press release last week.
“The New York State Museum is deeply honored to have helped restore the stories of the people whose remains were disturbed, ensuring they are remembered not as historical fragments, but as individuals who served and sacrificed,” said New York State Museum Executive Director Jennifer Saunders.
The transportation and re-burial Friday is part of a so-called “Repose of the Fallen” project, and will feature a motorcade will including New York State Police leading nine Korean War and Vietnam-era military trucks.
