The gravestone for the first person buried in the First Church’s graveyard stands again.
Samuel Keyes died at 9-weeks-old in 1785, according to the gravestone that was in the basement of the church.
“No one knows how long the stone had been in the basement, but Samuel’s grave may have been one of 16 that were moved when the church built an addition for community activities more than a century ago,” said longtime church member and the church historian George Wardle.
A church member found the stone while scoping the dirt-floored, unlit space under the sanctuary. The stone was in fine shape, said Wardle. And it now stands near the Eliot Street entrance to the Jamaica Plain Burying Ground, third on the right in the row paralleling Eliot Street…