VCU archaeologists examine the 19th-century well holding human remains in April 1994. (Photo courtesy Shawn Utsey)
Two years ago this month, a 10-person group known as the Family Representative Council made preliminary recommendations about studying, memorializing and burying human remains from a pre-Civil War well at Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical campus. The bodies likely were acquired through grave robbing, with 19th-century anatomy students using them to practice dissection, amputation and autopsy.
Afterward, the remains, along with clothes and medical tools, were discarded and forgotten until 1994, when construction of the Kontos Medical Sciences Building uncovered the well. In a study released in 2012, the Smithsonian Institution concluded that the remains represented 44 adults and nine children. A majority were identified as African or African-American and likely included enslaved people.
VCU’s East Marshall Street Well Project website gives little indication of progress since the recommendations were presented on June 4, 2016. But Kevin Allison, a senior assistant to VCU’s president, says the council members, acting as symbolic descendants, have been finalizing them. Allison says the next step is to form an “implementation work group,” comprising council and VCU representatives to act on the recommendations.
