Before excavations began Monday, a private blessing was held. “It was important for us to have that ceremony — to bless the ancestors,” said Connie Matthews Harshaw, a church member and board president of a foundation that preserves First Baptist’s history. “Because we don’t know their names. Their names are known only to God.”

First Baptist’s original church was destroyed by a tornado in 1834. The second structure, built in 1856, stood there for a century. That building was bought in 1956 and razed to build a parking lot for Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that was expanding at the time and that now has more than 400 structures.