Road crew unearths remains of pioneers

OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Archaeologists are exhuming skeletal remains and antique coffin fragments unearthed when construction crews started widening a road in Oak Brook.

At first it appeared there were a handful of coffins overlooked when the cemetery for farmers was moved in the 1960s. But now the remains of 18 pioneers have been discovered and the archaeological dig may add $300,000 to the $4.4 million road project, officials said.

Archaeologists hired by DuPage County have spent six weeks searching for remains buried on the farm settled by David and Kathryn Thurston in 1836.

"You have to be delicate because you absolutely want to minimize the chance of disturbing the grave sites any more than you already have," DuPage County engineer Chuck Tokarski said.

The Thurstons and 20 other families left central New York for the fertile Illinois plains and came to present-day Oak Brook by covered wagon, said the Thurstons' great-great-granddaughter, Pat Woodstrup, 72, of Sycamore.

She said some of her ancestors were buried in unmarked graves and probably were overlooked when a developer moved the marked coffins to a private cemetery in Hinsdale to make room for a subdivision. She said all the remains should be reburied in Hinsdale, though county officials have yet to decide where to bury them.

"I definitely would like to see whoever is left in there moved to a location where they won't be disturbed again," Woodstrup said. "They all wanted to be buried together the first time, so I think they should be together again."