The St. Mary’s Chapel, built about 1667, was Maryland’s first major brick building. Built in the form of a cross, it measured 55 feet long and 57 feet wide at the arms. In frontier Maryland, where most settlers lived in humble wood cottages, it was a remarkable building. All that remains is its massive brick foundation, measuring three feet wide and five feet deep. There are hundreds of unmarked graves in and around the chapel, and the site was the cemetery for St. Mary’s City in the earliest years of settlement. Many of Maryland’s founders lie here in long-forgotten graves. In 1990, three lead coffins were discovered buried in the left arm, or transept, of the cross-shaped building. They are the first 17th-century lead coffins found by archaeologists in North America.