By Gretchen Keiser

The 110-year-old vault containing the remains of Father Thomas O’Reilly, who rescued the center of Atlanta from Gen. Sherman’s fiery march to the sea, has apparently been found beneath the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

A small group of men, involved in the reconstruction work at the fire-gutted church, detected and uncovered the vault in late November and early December. Lifting out flooring brick by brick, they uncovered two caskets in separate, adjacent crypts in a basement room that had been used as a storeroom.

One of the two caskets is clearly identified by a silver plaque as that of Father Thomas Francis Cleary, a pastor of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception from 1881-83 who died at the age of 30 of tuberculois.

The second and smaller casket, which bears no identifying plaque, is believed to be that of Father O’Reilly, the Shrine’s most famous pastor and hero in the history of Atlanta and the Georgia church. Father O’Reilly, who died in 1872 at the age of 41, is credited with saving the City Hall and courthouse, five churches, including the Shrine, and a number of private homes, from the fire which Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman used to cripple the South’s railroad hub during the Civil War.

The crypts, whose discovery rewarded the persistence of the small search crew, match descriptions provided by newspaper accounts of the funeral services for the two pastors, which were recorded in considerable detail. One such account, published in the June 11, 1884 edition of The Atlanta Constitution, specified that Father Cleary’s casket “will be placed in the vault beside the remains of the late Rev. Thomas O’Reilly.” Other newspaper accounts specified that the vault was under the church, which was still being completed when Father O’Reilly died in 1872.

According to the newspaper account of Father O’Reilly’s funeral, his casket was also marked by a plaque carrying his name and age. However, the small, elliptical-shaped coffin beside Father Cleary’s no longer bears a visible marker. A discolored area on the lid may indicate where a plaque once was fixed.

But perhaps the greatest mystery is that workers can find no sign that the vault itself was ever marked by a plaque indicating where the two pastors had been buried. No plaque – or anchor marks that might show where a plaque was fixed – has so far been discovered.

The eight-by-10-foot basement room, which is under the center of the main altar parallel to Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, has three granite steps leading up into it from the modern, stainless steel kitchen area nearby.

The room has exposed brick on three sides and fieldstone on the fourth. The original arched entryway is visible, although partially covered by heating ducts added when the kitchen was remodeled in the late 1960s. The original brick floor had been covered over the years and the room used as a storage area by the parish Altar Society. While the story persisted that Father O’Reilly had been buried within the church, the location of the vault was lost to memory.

Transforming Folklore

The rediscovery has brought an aspect of joy to the work at the Shrine, which was gutted and blackened by fire August 6, 1982. The small group of workers who gradually became involved in the surreptitious search for the vault were elated by their role in the rediscovery of an historic aspect of the church and the city.

“There’s a great feeling associated with turning folklore into fact,” said Christopher Knott, 30, who initiated the search while overseeing reconstruction work at the Shrine for the archdiocese.

“We’re fortunate we did not lose, in total, an historic monument,” when the church burned, Knott said. “Perhaps we’ve contributed to bringing back more of the history than might have been there before and you can’t help but feel good about that.”

Monsignor Jerry Hardy, chancellor of the archdiocese, said the diocese would check with city officials to make sure the caskets could remain in place and, if that is approved, would “see that they are properly interred and make some provision for acknowledging this in the sanctuary of the church,” perhaps by a plaque. The architectural drawings will also be amended to show the location of the vault. “The historical significance is clear,” Monsignor Hardy said, “There’d been some doubt as to whether or not Father O’Reilly’s tomb actually was in the basement. This clears up that confusion.”

The seeds for rediscovery were planted during the first hours after the Shrine fire when a former parishioner, Claud Shirley, and Father Peter Dora, were called to examine damage done to the Shrine’s pipe organ, Knott said. Both mentioned the belief that Father O’Reilly had been buried in the church.

The current staff at the Shrine and parishioners also brought up the possibility, Knott said, but without being able to provide any particular clues as to where the casket might have been placed. Even as that story circulated, other residents repeated a tale that Father O’Reilly’s casket has been removed for burial elsewhere in intervening years. The storeroom near the kitchen was so packed with things that “on the day of the fire we couldn’t even open the door,” Knott said.

As work got underway to enclose the Shrine and make it safe, a Georgia Tech student from Ireland, Peter O’Reilly, visited Shrine pastor, Father Thomas Giblin, to see whether any clue had turned up to the burial spot of his great-grand-uncle, Father Thomas O’Reilly.

Three Possibilities

His curiosity peaked, Knott asked construction manager Malcolm Durden, head stonemason Mitchell Joyner and job superintendent Jim Johnson, who also had 20 years experience in stone work, if they would mind working discretely on the search for the burial site. The work proceeded after hours and, at first, was broadly focused on three areas: the large marble altar, which is hollow; an area beneath the altar within hollow floor space; and the basement beneath the altar.

Only as documents relating to the history of the church began to turn up did the search narrow to the basement. In particular, a 1954 book on the Shrine, written by Van Buren Colley, gathered 100-year-old Atlanta Constitution articles on the Shrine, including the funerals of Fathers O’Reilly and Cleary.

A Sept 10, 1872 article specified that Father O’Reilly’s burial would take place in a “vault prepared for it under the new church.”

The Sept. 11, 1872 account of the Mass said “the remains were carried to the new church and buried beneath the altar.”

The most specific description came, however, from the June 11, 1884, account of Father Cleary’s funeral, which said the procession would leave the church and proceed “around the Loyd and Hunter Street corner, where it will enter the basement of the church, where the casket will be placed in the vault beside the remains of the late Rev. Thomas O’Reilly.

The Basement

With speculation now focused on the basement, Joyner and Johnson noted that the storeroom had two particular qualities: it was directly beneath the altar and the three granite steps were peculiar. The steps, which are the only granite ones in the building, beside those used in the main church entrance, were of no use, Joyner said, unless the floor had been raised to allow a crypt to be built. Even when the search focused on the room, attention first turned to the brick wall at the rear and a hollow space behind. That search proved fruitless.

The room was completely swept and the floor covering pulled up. It revealed the original brick floor. There, outlined by bricks set in pattern were two rectangles positioned lengthwise in the rooms floor.

Like characters in Dickens novel, the workmen proceeded at night and quietly, after checking to be sure they were within health and city regulations and appropriate church law. Beginning with the rectangle on the left, they worked through brick layers, removing them one by one, and carting them away to avoid discovery. After three or four nights, they broke through to a hollow area and could see the corner, apparently of a metallic casket.

The First Casket

The first completely uncovered turned out to be that of Father Cleary, still bearing the inscribed silver plaque, a cross and a torch. The metallic casket is so well preserved that tassels are still visible on casket handles. The crypt is coated with lime, apparently a health precaution because the priest died of tuberculosis.

Similar work to the left revealed the unmarked casket believed to be that of Father O’Reilly. A further search has revealed no other object in the floor to the left or right of the two caskets.

The discovery also coincides with an observation made by Van Burren Colley in his book.

Two plaques in the main entranceway to the church were dedicated to Fathers O’Reilly and Cleary, he wrote. “The same two priests were the only priests ever to be buried under the altar at the church.”

The group working on the vault said, at times, they felt a bit strange, but never that what they were doing was inappropriate, perhaps because they were seeking to clarify stories and, at first, only looked at the task at hand. Joyner said he was “elated,” particularly when the discovery emerged in the room they had selected first as the most likely site.

Knott noted that the discovery came gradually.

“It didn’t dawn on me in the beginning what we might have embarked upon in terms of its historical significance,” he said. “It was more to put an end to all the rumors and perhaps give the O’Reilly family an indication of where he might be.”

He said he was particularly grateful for the work of the search group who, after all, “could have been on a wild goose chase.”

“Perhaps we have returned an aspect of history and tradition to that church,” he said, “something that’s been gone and now is back.”