"Here Were Re-interred
The Remains of Persons
Found Under the Boylston Street Mall
During the Digging of the Subway
1895."

-Grave marker in Central Burying Ground

Jane Munroe was born in 1767 and at age twenty-eight married Captain John Hodgkins. Nothing more is written of Jane Hodgkins until September 20th 1821 when she was buried in Central Burying Ground, on Boston Common. It did not prove to be her final resting place, however.

Subway construction on Boylston Street started in 1895, tearing up portions of land which bordered the Central Burying Ground. Jane’s body was likely one of over a thousand discovered during the project. Her coffin plate surfaced during the movement of displaced remains. The coffin plate was not reburied, but donated along with several others to The Bostonian Society. Jane’s last earthly possession demonstrates how the remains of a woman born in the third quarter of the eighteenth century came into direct contact with a subway system, a testament to the ever-evolving nature of downtown Boston.

All images are courtesy of The Bostonian Society.