Now that is a story of perseverance and tenacity that we genealogist and cemetery
restorationist can be proud of. Sheila
Tewastar(a)aol.com wrote:
[This article fails to mention that 9 GW-MSTD students worked on this
project under the direction of Deb Hull-Walski and Randall Scott. Randy is a MSTD
alumnus too. GW has prepared a press release for release today telling the
sotry of our part in this project. Congratualtions to Deb, Randy and all the
student interns. Ildi]
After Years Lost, Identity Reclaimed
Detective Work Leads Smithsonian Team to Give Unearthed Body a Name
By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 20, 2007; B01
He was a sickly orphan who had died of pneumonia as a teenager and then was
left behind when the cemetery where he was buried in Northwest Washington
moved a decade after his death.
He lay lost and forgotten beneath the sprawl of the city, while six
generations and 155 years passed by.
And when his body was accidentally unearthed by a construction crew in 2005
-- still clad in his fine white burial suit and encased in an iron coffin --
researchers at the _Smithsonian Institution_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Smithsonian+Institution?t...)
vowed to find out who
he was.
Now they say they have.
This week, after a two-year project that unfolded like a detective story,
experts at the _National Museum of Natural History_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Museum+of+Natura...)
said
that the mysterious boy in the iron coffin has been identified: He was
William T. White, about 15, from Accomack County on _Virginia_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Virginia?tid=informline) 's Eastern
Shore.
He had been buried in a cemetery that probably belonged to Columbian College,
the precursor to _George Washington University_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+George+Washington+Uni...)
, in
what is now _Columbia Heights_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Columbia+Heights?tid=info...) , and
had been a student at the college
preparatory school when he died Jan. 24, 1852.
Smithsonian anthropologist Douglas W. Owsley said yesterday that the boy was
just over five feet tall and probably had been an unhealthy youth, because of
a hole that was discovered between two chambers in his heart.
The identification was made after museum researchers, led by Deborah
Hull-Walski and Randal Scott, figured out that the youth might be White, constructed
a 788-person family tree -- a diagram that stretched the length of a wall --
and tracked down a descendant in _Lancaster, Pa._
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Lancaster+(Pennsylvania)?...)
The descendant, Linda Dwyer, 64, a night clerk in a convenience store, agreed
to provide a sample of her DNA, obtained via a mouth swab, and when that was
compared with DNA taken from the boy's left shinbone, it matched.
She said elated Smithsonian researchers called her with the news, saying: "
'It's you! It's you!' "
"I think it's awesome," Dwyer said yesterday, adding that she believes she
is
White's great-great-great-grandniece. "The whole technology of finding me
and putting it all together. . . . It's so cool."
The museum also had computerized facial reconstructions done by experts from
the _National Center for Missing_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Center+for+Missi...)
& Exploited Children in
_Alexandria_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Alexandria?tid=informline) . The images
depict a pleasant-looking youth about the age of a
high school freshman, who a century and a half after his death again has a
name.
"It's more than a name," Hull-Walski said. "It's his whole story.
It's his
family's story. It's who he was, what he did. . . . It's everything."
The saga began April 1, 2005, when construction workers digging beneath a gas
line outside an 80-year-old apartment building at 1465 Columbia Rd. NW
stumbled on the elegant coffin.
The workers locked it in an empty building, where, on April 4, vandals broke
in and smashed the coffin's oval glass faceplate and metal cover.
But the Fisk and Raymond "metallic burial case" was a big clue. Such coffins
were expensive, often reserved for the well-to-do, and were popular between
1850 and 1860, Hull-Walski and Scott said in an interview Tuesday at the
Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland. The cases also were airtight.
The museum, which Owsley said investigated the case as a public service and
research opportunity, took custody of the coffin after the vandalism, and in
August 2005, he and a team of pathologists unbolted the lid and examined the
body and the clothing.
The boy was extremely well preserved and clad in white cotton clothing that
included a pleated shirt and vest with cloth-covered buttons, flared trousers,
darned socks and ankle-length underdrawers.
An autopsy indicated that the boy probably died of lobar pneumonia, and the
clothing style hinted that he had probably died in the 1850s.
But why was he buried in the now-residential neighborhood of Columbia
Heights?
The investigation revealed that Columbian College had once been there, and a
page from a 1970 history of George Washington University stated that the old
college had a cemetery. Further research showed that the original cemetery
was moved in 1866 from the periphery of the college grounds to the main campus.
And it was during this move that the iron coffin was probably left behind.
This might have been because the tombstone was absent or had been misplaced
during the Civil War, when the college was the site of two sprawling military
hospitals, the researchers said.
The team then began poring over lists of obituaries from the 1850s compiled
from local newspapers and quickly hit what looked like pay dirt.
The May 27, 1852, edition of Washington's Daily National Intelligencer
carried an obituary for Lemuel P. Bacon, 12, the son of Columbian's president,
Joel Bacon.
It seemed perfect.
The museum had the samples of the coffin boy's mitochondrial DNA, which
Smithsonian experts said can be traced and matched via female descendants over
many generations. Hull-Walski and Scott developed a Bacon family tree and
located a descendant in _Texas_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Texas?tid=informline) . But when the
descendant's DNA was compared with the
boy's, it did not match.
Neither researcher was surprised. It was too easy.
Another apparent breakthrough followed. The Jan. 28, 1852, edition of the
Intelligencer carried a brief obituary for a William Taylor White, of Accomack,
who had died "at college hill" four days earlier.
The researchers obtained a digest of old wills for Accomack County and found
one in which a guardian had left White money for his education. This time,
Scott said, "we really felt like we had the right person."
The same digest contained the will of a Levin White, who had a son named
William T., and who the researchers figured must have been the boy's late
father. "It matched up beautifully," Scott said. But when a descendant of Levin
White was located in _Baltimore_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Baltimore?tid=informline) , to the
experts' surprise, her DNA did not match.
"That was devastating," Scott said.
But they had one more prime candidate. The team had also found an obituary
for a William Henry White, who had died Sept. 29, 1852, at the age of 14. There
was no connection to the college, but the boy's father, Mathias, had been a
Pennsylvania Avenue undertaker who used Fisk and Raymond coffins.
Again a descendant was traced, this time to suburban _Maryland_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Maryland?tid=informline) . But again the
DNA did not match.
It was now summer 2006, and the team had been working on the case for a year.
The boy's body was being preserved at the museum, where it remained
yesterday, awaiting final disposition, encased in a white body bag inside a metal
cooler. But the researchers appeared no closer to knowing his name.
"What do we do now?" Hull-Walski said they thought.
Yet they remained determined.
"He'd been left behind that initial time," Scott said. "It wasn't
going to
happen again."
Hull-Walski said: "We wanted to know who he was. We just wanted to give him a
name."
In the spring, she found a crucial clue. Searching through a computer
database of the Washington Intelligencer, she stumbled on another notice of the
death of William T. White. But it wasn't an obituary.
It was a heartfelt "resolution" drawn up by his college friends, expressing
their anguish at the loss of one who "was bound to us by the tenderest ties of
friendship." Somehow it had not turned up in prior research, but it
reinforced to Hull-Walski that, despite the DNA, William T. White had to be the
coffin boy. She showed the notice to Scott. "It's him," she told her
colleague.
But where had they gone wrong?
"So we started again," Hull-Walski said. She appealed to colleagues on the
Eastern Shore, where White was born, explaining the problem and asking for
help.
She soon got it. A local genealogist called her with the news that the Levin
White she thought was William's father, and whose family tree she had traced,
was from a different White clan.
There was the research mistake, Hull-Walski realized, and that's why the DNA
didn't match. "It was a relief," she said.
Yet it still didn't tell her who the boy's father was. Without that
knowledge, no descendants could be traced, and no modern DNA could be checked.
Then more help came. Two acquaintances visiting an Accomack records office
found an 1850 court document that referred to White's status as an orphan --
and listed the name of his deceased father, William A. White.
"Bingo," Hull-Walski said.
The team quickly traced the family and located Dwyer in _Lancaster_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Lancaster?tid=informline) .
Hull-Walski and a colleague went to visit Dwyer Aug. 1, and took the DNA swab in a
quiet corner of a _Denny's restaurant_
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Denny's+Corporation?t...) .
The comparison, performed for free by Mitotyping Technologies, of State
College, Pa., came through a week or so later.
The DNA matched. And the orphaned youngster from a bygone time finally had
his identity back.
"You just kind of tear up," Hull-Walski said. "It just felt so good. It
felt
so doggone good."
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