History channel show has Smithfield connection

"Written in Bone," a History Channel program that airs at 8 p.m. Saturday and midnight Sunday, will feature a segment on the exhumation of Col. Joseph Bridger from beneath Historic St. Luke's Church in Smithfield in January 2007.

The program, part of the Save Our History series, features Dr. Doug Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It was Owsley and his team who exhumed Bridger's remains from beneath the floor of the old church.

Bridger, a leader in colonial Virginia, died in 1686. He was originally buried at Whitemarsh, his plantation near what is today the town of Smithfield. His remains were placed in the nave of St. Luke's in 1894.