Over at Sci-Tech Today, there is an interesting article from the Associated Press, Colonial Skeleton Stumps Archaeologists, about trying to identify remains from Colonial America in the 1600s. I’ve read another article in a magazine that mentioned some genealogy work that was done in England to find his sister (as you’ll see, they thought they had found her, and took DNA samples, however they turned out to be wrong.
Excerpt from the article:
The quest to identify a nearly intact skeleton found at Jamestown continues.
Jamestown officials said this week that without DNA proof, researchers are doing other studies to test their theory that the skeleton discovered in 2002 belongs to Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, a founder of the first permanent English settlement in North America, established almost 400 years ago.
The announcement came after The Church of England issued a statement that tests have cast doubts on the possibility that the skeleton belonged to Gosnold.
Last June, researchers took a bone sample from an unmarked grave under the floor of a church in Shelley, England, thought to be the likely location of the remains of Gosnold’s sister, Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney. It was the first time The Church of England had authorized such research for scientific purposes.
If we end up with a few high-profile stories like this, you could see a lot more people trying to indentify past remains, which would be good news for genealogy.