Bones may have come from 1800s family cemetery

From the Daily News:

The past doesn’t stay buried for long in Queens.

The human bones unearthed Tuesday by a construction crew on a routine dig in Richmond Hill may have come from an old cemetery near the farm of a prominent Queens family, a borough expert said.

Historian Carl Ballenas believes the 108th St. property near Jamaica Ave., where five skeletal fragments were found, used to be part of the Napier farm, run by patriarch John B. Napier in the 1800s.

“I know from research over time that there was indeed a family cemetery in that area,” the member of the Richmond Hill Historical Society said.

The farm was located just north of the strip of land bounded roughly by what are now Jamaica Ave., Atlantic Ave., 108th and 110th Sts., Ballenas said.

An analysis of archival maps appeared to confirm the location of the Napier farm in the area.

Still, authorities are remaining mum on the origin of the dusty fragments.

The city medical examiner’s office is investigating, a spokeswoman said.

Bones uncovered in front of Richmond Hill house

From CBS New York:

A subcontractor digging in a Queens yard made an unexpected discovery Tuesday.

At 11:30 a.m., the National Grid worker was digging with a backhoe in the front yard of a home located at 87-52 108th Street — across the street from P.S. 90.

At about 3-feet-deep, the subcontractor spotted what appeared to be bones.

The worker then got in the ditch and uncovered skeletal remains and called police.

Police arrived and called the medical examiner who removed the bones.

An anthropologist determined that they were in fact human remains.

The homeowner who has lived at the address for more than 20 years claimed to know nothing of the remains.
No criminality is suspected.