FLORISSANT, MO (KMOX) -- When a Florissant man started doing some landscaping he thought what he was trying to dig up were just paving blocks. Instead, he was digging up history.
Cody Miller tells Total Information AM Weekend, he was having a tough time digging up the largest of the 'paving stones', so he brought out bigger tools. "I even had a big 4 x 4 post trying to get it up out of the ground, but the thing was so big I ended up just getting a sledgehammer and breaking it into a few pieces."
When he started flipping the pieces over he saw writing, so he and his girlfriend, Lauren Merz, quickly started gathering the pieces and putting them back together. "Sure enough," he says, "it's just this massive tombstone." The stone read, "Sacred to the memory of Michael Connor, Native of Wexford, Ireland, Who departed this life Aug 31, 1822 aged 64 years."
The next day they dug up several of the smaller 'paving blocks' and discovered that they too were pieces of historic grave markers.
"I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh, is my house built on a grave site?'" he says. "That night I didn't sleep too well."
No, his home wasn't built over an old grave site, but it's not far from the old St. Ferdinand Cemetery, which was next to the fire station on New Florissant Road, in what is now Spanish Land Grant Park. Cody says he is donating the markers to Historic Florissant Inc, which plans to create a display a the park.