Once upon a time in Knoxville, one could purchase 400 acres of land for $10. That's exactly what an Irishman named John McNeil did in 1801. The seller was future U.S. president, Andrew Jackson.

Now, the Episcopal School of Knoxville, 950 Episcopal School Way, sits on 99 acres of what was once part of the McNeil family farm, and on Dec. 21, 2006, a team of University of Tennessee student and faculty anthropologists led by Nicholas Herrmann uncovered the skeletal remains of John McNeil.

The team removed the remains two days before Christmas.

The project started with the school's decision to sell a surplus 20 acres which included the grave site. David Leech, a founding member of the school's board of trustees, oversaw the moving of the grave and marker to a site close to the school buildings and chapel.

But before McNeil is laid to rest once again, the UT Archeological Research Laboratory is using his remains to discover more about the people and lifestyles of the Knoxville area 200 years ago.

"The Board of Trustees knew about the grave when it purchased the property," the school's communications director Kelly Norrell said.

 "The Rev. Leech took on the project of researching John McNeil and getting court approval for the body to be disinterred and moved. He made the contact with the UT Department of Anthropology, and he paid for the exhumation. None of this would have happened if it had not been for him."

The school received court approval to move the grave in 2006.

The lab plans to have the remains for about nine months. The school will conduct a public ceremony when the bones are reburied. A distant relative of McNeil's has placed a bronze plaque at the original gravestone at the intersection of Lovell Road and Gilbert Drive.

McNeil's death is recorded as 1833 at the age of 88. Only part of a mandible, some vertebrae, hips, pelvis, upper legs, feet and a few finger bones were recovered. Herrmann said the ribs had disintegrated while the remaining fragments were the consistency of wet paper.

The process of cleaning the bones with paintbrushes and sifting through the grave was a painstaking process, but Herrmann has discovered that McNeil was missing all his upper teeth and had only two remaining in the bottom jaw. He also suffered from arthritis in his back and neck. His exact weight and height is still to be determined, but Herrmann believes he was tall.

Two metal and two bone buttons also were found commonly used in McNeil's era.

Norrell said that Patricia Brake's eighth grade history class is conducting research on Knoxville during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They are planning to make a DVD about their findings.