Story highlights Workers building apartment complex found skeletons from colonial times

"Everyone was a bit surprised," the owner of the location said

(CNN) At first, they found just a few bones.

Then they dug up an entire coffin. And then another.

A construction crew working on a new building in Philadelphia on Thursday uncovered dozens of coffins buried 6 feet below a parking lot.

The site of a new apartment complex has been temporarily transformed into a quest to unearth the city's past. Archaeologists are sorting through the remains, hoping to glean a better idea of what life was like in colonial Philadelphia.

Historians say the coffins were part of the First Baptist Church burial ground established in 1707 in the historic part of the city on what is now Arch Street. Records show that they should have been moved across town to the Mount Moriah Cemetery about 1860, but the job was never completed.

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