It’s a shame that dead men tell no tales, for we have about 60 dead men in Groton graves whose voices could help solve a long standing local mystery.

Soon after the Battle of Groton Heights, in 1781, the British buried their casualties just outside the gate of Fort Griswold in a mass grave so shallow it presented a health risk to the town.

To avert yet another deadly epidemic, the new garrison at the fort dug up the decomposing bodies and dumped them in deeper, anonymous graves somewhere else.

The move went undocumented, and the whereabouts of the new location faded with memory, such that no one today knows where the soldiers are buried.

But then a skeletal hand metaphorically thrust its way through the soil into daylight. This past September, I received an email from Matt Reardon, executive director of the New England Civil War Museum in Vernon, Conn., and author of “The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781,” due to be published this year.

Some months prior, a museum visitor had chatted with Reardon about the Battle of Groton Heights. He claimed to have been involved in transporting human remains from Smith Lake Cemetery to the Avery-Morgan Cemetery in the early 1980s, when Groton Utilities unexpectedly unearthed human remains.

The man claimed those skeletons were “all wearing military buttons.” Reardon knew the brass buttons would likely be stamped with their owner’s regiment, perhaps finally identifying the British soldiers’ long lost location.

Regrettably, Reardon didn’t catch the visitor’s name, and he contacted me for local investigative help.

Groton historian Jim Streeter shared vital information that revealed two mysterious incidents.

In 1915, the original Smith Lake Cemetery was moved from the Groton reservoir property on Route 117 (North Road) to its current location on Route 1 in Groton, adjacent to the Avery-Morgan Cemetery.

The oversight committee at the time documented 200 marked graves to be moved. But when the digging was done, 354 graves had been unearthed.

In “Smith Lake Cemetery 1723-1905 in Groton, Connecticut,” Walter Smith states that “only a fraction” of the 154 unmarked graves can be attributable to Smith descendants buried between 1736 and 1784.

Then, over 60 years later, the event described by Reardon’s museum visitor occurred: In the early 1980s, a Groton Utilities excavation project unearthed even more unmarked remains from the area of the original Smith Lake Cemetery.

Those exhumations were in addition to the 154 unmarked graves discovered in 1915.

Since the museum visitor was most likely an employee of the Groton water department, I contacted several Groton Utilities retirees, including a supervisor at the scene. All of them recalled the exhumations at Smith Lake, but none could provide any details; none recalled the sighting of British uniforms or brass buttons.

Unfortunately, Groton Town Police records of their investigation into the 1980s incident have been expunged due to age. The Groton Town clerk’s office searched diligently but found no related records. Groton Utilities never responded to my inquiry.

The Connecticut State Police’s records division took three years to process my last request, so determining their possible involvement will take considerable time.

The British could have been buried in one of several established cemeteries at the time, if not an anonymous patch of woods. Or, they could simply have been buried in a deeper pit at Fort Griswold. That would have been the most convenient solution, as opposed to moving 60 decomposing bodies across town — unless the reburial team, soldiers themselves, felt it would desecrate the memories of those brave Americans lost in the battle.

In “The Colonial Burying Grounds of Eastern Connecticut and the Men Who Made Them,” James Slater states: “Tradition has it that a cartload of bodies of British soldiers was brought to the southwest corner of the Avery burying ground and unceremoniously dumped into a common grave. There is no marker in this area, although there are a number of uncut field stones.”

Though Slater’s comment suggests burial in Groton’s Avery-Morgan Cemetery, “tradition” is no confirmation of fact.

The discoveries of unmarked graves at Smith Lake Cemetery seem too coincidental to ignore. I’ve yet to find another local incident concerning so many unidentified remains.

The historical record is surprisingly silent about the relocation of the soldiers, including local history books. Also contributing to the lack of evidence was the absence of regulatory oversight in 1915, when the initial exhumations at Smith Lake occurred.

When the Morgan Cemetery on Sandy Hollow Road was relocated in the 1960s, there were strict regulations in effect for reburials, including having a mortician onsite to monitor the operation.

Such protocols were surely in effect 20 years later, when the Groton Utilities exhumations occurred. But as long as Groton Utilities remains silent, important historical questions may never be answered.

And that is a shame, because those dead British soldiers are historically significant to our past, forever linked to Groton and the state of Connecticut for their role in the tragedy of Fort Griswold.

The unexpected deaths of so many — especially officers — at the hands of our ancestors may well have fueled the anger leading to the massacre of the unarmed fort’s defenders after surrender, and also the rage that triggered the killing of Colonel William Ledyard himself.

We might mark the British graves for the same reasons we preserve all historic sites: to provide future generations a connection tot he past, a place where one can remember and know from whence we came.

Author James Baldwin reminds us: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” Our history defines who we are.

Colonel Ledyard’s story includes British Major William Montgomery, who was killed on Fort Griswold and buried inside the ravelin (the V-shaped hill just outside the fort’s gate). Reardon knows firsthand that Montgomery's family in Scotland is interested in having his grave marked. Reardon also has the names of all the British soldiers killed and buried at Fort Griswold. They will be published in his book.

Names add identity to faceless statistics. It’s one thing to state “61 British soldiers were killed at Fort Griswold,” but it would be something else altogether to see their names posted on a memorial marker. Names provide an emotional human connection that numbers cannot.

Though the search will continue, even if we never find the British soldiers, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — the overseers of the fort — would do well to at least mark the soldiers’ burial site on Fort Griswold with their names, filling a long existing gap in the fort’s history and enhancing the experience of visitors to the fort, including schoolchildren and our many tourists. It would add a remarkable new historical dimension to the state park.

The Montgomery family, and quite possibly other soldiers’ ancestors, seem ready for long overdue recognition. Are we?

John Steward lives in Waterford. He lectures on the life of Colonel William Ledyard and can be contacted at tossinglines@gmail.com.