March  8, 2013 WLBT Channel 3 Jackson, Ms. by Walt Grayson JACKSON, MS -- There are signs of progress everywhere at The University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.  It is odd that what is going on in the midst of such progress & advancements toward the future can all of a sudden throw open the door to the distant past. Within the last couple of weeks, removal of about 4 feet of dirt in order to prepare this particular area for new construction uncovered about 24 previously unknown & unmarked graves. Everywhere you see of the marker flags there is a body beneath it.  The theory is that these people died at the old Mississippi Asylum for the  insane that stood on this property from the mid 1800s until the early 1900s.  UMMC was built where the old asylum once stood. Derrick Anderson, an archeologist at Misissippi State is one of the team working on the graves. "We're guessing because there's no personal remains, no clothes, not even really any bottoms or pins or anything, that they were probably residents of the asylum & either buried in a shroud or not buried with anything, so that would put them probably around in the mid to late 1800s to early 1900s." said Anderson. The bodies are carefully removed from the coffins & taken to the Cobb Archeology Institure at Mississippi State & laid out & individually examined. Dr. Nick Herman, anthropologist at Mississippi State says the remains themselves can tell a lot about the circumstances of these peoples lives. "Yea, figure out when they were buried," said Dr. Herman. "But also looking at the bones to give us information about what their lives were like in the asylum." And when the research at State is finished, the remains will come back to UMMC, Nichole Reese says a special place is already there for them. "When the university is done with it they will then file a burieal permit with the Ar

Peggy, that was a really interesting article. Leads to two thoughts: 1. On Resurrection Day there are sure going to be some surprised people at the bodies coming together from the dust and rising from the ground where they are standing and, 2. Remember the James Mitchner novels where he takes a patch of earth and tells its story from creation to present times? I always loved those books. Jeannine Jeannine Kirkpatrick Smith