You Mean He Wasn't a Hunchbacked Woman?

More news on the search for Friedrich Schiller's earthly remains. Neither of the skulls thought to belong to the poet was his, and the two accompanying skeletons were found to "contain bones from at least six people."

Five members of the Schiller family were exhumed in the process to provide the DNA samples for comparison. They found no matching DNA among either of the poet's supposed bodies.

They determined that the skull found by von Froriep was far off the mark. Instead of Schiller, a large man, it actually belonged to a hunchbacked woman, who through analysis of the bones and historical records they later showed was a lady of the court whom Schiller was known to have disliked while alive. The jawbone belonged to another woman entirely.

The other skull was so similar to Schiller's death mask that it confounded even contemporary anthropologists, leading one to say that it belonged to Schiller's "Doppelgänger." The fact that this close match had seven strange teeth inserted post-mortem has led one of the experts who worked on the documentary to the conclusion that it was fixed to look like Schiller's skull and that the real one was stolen. [Link]

One Skull Too Many

Anthropologists have exhumed three relatives of German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller in hopes of positively identifying which of two skulls is his.

The mystery surrounding the skulls began in 1826, 21 years after Schiller died in Weimar, when the local mayor had 23 skulls retrieved from a mass grave in which the poet was buried. Many eminent people at that time were buried in mass graves.

The mayor identified the largest skull as Schiller's and it was brought to the home of his contemporary Goethe, who wrote a poem about it, according to German scholar Albrecht Schoene.

In 1911, another skull was disinterred from the mass grave which researchers claimed was the real one. [Link]

Journalists Write the Darndest Things

Kathryn Larcher sent along this excerpt from last weekend's World Wide Words newsletter. Thanks, Kathryn!

Department of post-mortem indecision: A cemetery manager was quoted in the Guardian Weekend last Saturday (16 February). He explained they sometimes had to exhume bodies: "Some people have an aversion to burial and decide they would rather have a cremation after all."

While we're on such matters, Peter G Neumann reported in the Risks Digest newsletter that the Web site of WSMV, Nashville, Tennessee, had a story on 15 February under the headline "Woman Says Being Declared Dead Ruins Life".

Department of clerical fecundity: Noted by Noel Donaghey on the Web site of The Adelaide Advertiser for 15 February: "An effort to lift South Australia's population to two million well before its target of 2050 will be led by Monsignor David Cappo."

There Was No Body There

Last weekend, archaeologists finally started digging for missing duelist Charles Henry Dickinson in Jim and Laura Bowen's front yard.

“The day we moved in, the guys across the street came in and said, ‘Have you heard about the body? Are you going to help excavate it?’” said Mr. Bowen, as he watched with his daughter, Lily, in his arms.

Several hours of digging turned up nothing.

The archaeologist leading the dig, Larry McKee, his jeans streaked with mud, announced to onlookers and his tired crew, “I think we’re going to call it, guys.”

The Bowens looked out from the porch as workers replaced the sod, saying they might continue after more research.

“We should let them dig up the whole yard,” Ms. Bowen said, “just to settle it once and for all.” [Link]

They Didn't Mention That in the Musical

Nilda Quartucci says she's the illegitimate daughter of Eva Perón.

The first inkling Nilda had that she was Eva's daughter was in 1966 when she was a mother of two. Her husband Isaur - a banker she had married at 15 - claimed he had wheedled the truth from her father after hearing rumours.

"I was numb," said Nilda. "Then one day I was out with my father and I said to him, 'So, I'm Evita's daughter?' He said, 'Oh, your husband told you.'" [Link]

A bid to have Perón's embalmed body exhumed for a DNA test was turned down by the courts in Argentina. But, given the complicated history of Evita's corpse, it may resurface on its own one of these days.

The Gipper's Off the Hook

The reason for George Gipp's exhumation has been revealed.

Ellen Weeks Easton said that she had often heard that her grandmother, Eva Bright, had dated Gipp while he was at Notre Dame. Eva became pregnant at the age of 18 and gave birth to a daughter just a few days after Gipp died in December of 1920 of complications from strep throat.

[Mike] Bynum said DNA tests completed late this week after a sample was obtained from the exhumation showed conclusively that Gipp was not the father of Eva Bright's daughter.

"The DNA match wasn't even close to those we had of tests from Eva's family," he said, adding that three tests were taken. [Link]

The Gipper Rises From the Grave

George Gipp died from pneumonia and a strep infection during his senior year at Notre Dame in 1920. Portrayed by Ronald Reagan in Knute Rockne, All American, he is supposed to have urged his teammates from his deathbed to "win just one for the Gipper."

On Oct. 4, his body was exhumed in Michigan, and a DNA sample taken.

[Medical Examiner Dr. Dawn] Nulf said she was contacted a couple of months ago by a family representative seeking the DNA test. She determined a court order was not required for the body to be exhumed. Instead, the family presented an affidavit that was approved by the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department.

Nulf declined to identify the relative but referred a reporter to Mike Bynum, a sports author who has researched Gipp and attended the exhumation. Bynum said it was requested by Rick Frueh, whose grandmother was one of Gipp's sisters. [Link]

The reason for the exhumation was not given. My guess? Notre Dame needed another pep talk.

Like a Community Barn-Raising, Only Different

The Mad Trapper of Rat River has been exhumed in Canada's Northwest Territories. A production company hopes to use DNA to finally identify Albert Johnson, "a gun-toting trapper who led the RCMP on the mother-of-all police chases across the Arctic during the depths of the Great Depression."

A film crew exhuming the body of the legendary outlaw in an effort to finally identify him had to dig two holes to find him — and wound up relying on the memory of a 92-year-old woman to successfully get DNA samples.

"We thought he was going to evade us one last time," Carrie Gour of Myth Merchant Films said Wednesday of the Alberta-based film company’s attempt to find an answer to one of the North’s great enduring mysteries.

Far from a macabre, horror-movie ambience, Gour described the exhumation as "magical."

"It was like a community barn-raising — only different." [Link]

Brushy Bill May Rise Again

The City Council in Hamilton, Texas, is considering a request to dig up the remains of "Brushy Bill" Roberts to obtain DNA samples.

Steve Sederwall, a former mayor of Capitan, N.M., told the council that he hopes to compare the DNA samples from Brushy Bill with remains of Billy the Kid’s mother. He said he already has samples from John Miller, another would-be Billy from New Mexico, along with a blood-stained bench where the Kid supposedly died after Sheriff Pat Garrett shot him. [Link]

They Lost Their Lunches

The bones of Col. Joseph Bridger, who died in 1686, were taken up in 1894 and reinterred at St. Luke's Church in Smithfield, Virginia. Forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley dug up those remains in January for analysis at the Smithsonian.

The first reburial was undertaken in a rather rough way, Owsley said. Those in charge took only enough bones from Bridger's original burial site to fill the tiny chamber allotted to him - and they may have left some of their lunches behind.

"One of the first things handed out to me in January was the left forearm of a rabbit," Owsley said. There also were a chicken bone and bones from a sheep that was less than a year old. [Link]

Houdini Offed by Unhappy Mediums?

A relative of Harry Houdini wants the escape artist's body exhumed.

Houdini's great nephew George Hardeen believes the performer may have been killed by people who were angry because he debunked their claims that they could communicate with the dead.

If his bid to have Houdini's remains exhumed is successful, Hardeen plans to have a team of forensic investigators examine the body for evidence of foul play. [Link]

Find A Grave has photos of Harry's impressive gravesite in Queens.

She Left No Rabbi Unturned

From the Appleton (Wisc.) Post Crescent of June 27, 1931:

GENEALOGIST SEEKS BURIED PARCHMENT

Washington—(AP)—Exhuming the body of an eighteenth century rabbi in a cemetery in Czechoslovakia will be the next step in the ancestor hunt in which Viola Root Cameron, international genealogist, is almost continually engaged.

Mrs. Cameron, blonde, small, quiet-mannered, hopes to find with the body a parchment which will supply some missing branches on the family tree of a wealthy New York client. She will go to Europe this summer personally to oversee the exhumation.

Such parchments, she says, were buried with the rabbis in the eighteenth century. The one she seeks was written between 1750 and 1800. If procured it will open a whole new field in tracing ancestry, she believes.

A Lot of People Have Ancestors

The Berkeley County Landmarks Commission in West Virginia searched for the grave of Civil War soldier Nimrod Wright for nearly a year, but now they're giving up. Descendant Dennis Wright had hoped to place Nimrod next to his widow, and is upset that the Commission gave up so quickly.

“There we are with Nimrod Evans Wright laying somewhere, rest his soul. His body probably never will be found,” Wright said.

[Chairman Don C.] Wood said the effort to exhume Nimrod was no longer the responsibility of the Landmarks Commission, adding Wright is free to continue the search for his relative on his own.

“A lot of people have ancestors,” Wood said. “He can go and get a permit.” [Link]

Digging for a Dimple

The remains of Col. Joseph Bridger have been exhumed from beneath a Virginia church and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis. And it's all because Jean Birdsong Tomes, president of the Bridger Family Association, wanted a look at the guy.

Tomes, a direct descendant who lives in North Carolina, initiated the move to exhume Bridger’s body less than a year ago. There was never a portrait of Bridger, or, if so, it was destroyed in a fire that burned his plantation. At an association meeting, she suggested exhuming the bones at St. Luke’s Church because she longed to see what her ancestor looked like, she said. A facial reconstruction is possible.

“I wonder if he had a dimple in his chin?” asked Merry Outlaw, another descendant, fingering her own cleft chin. [Link]

Bloodsucking Yankees

Belief in vampires was once prevalent in some parts of New England, where people went to great and disgusting lengths to ward them off.

Following the death of a family member from consumption (i.e., tuberculosis), other family members began to show the signs of tuberculosis infection. According to the New England folk belief, the "wasting away" of these family members was attributed to the recently deceased consumptive, who returned from the dead as a vampire to drain the life from the surviving relatives. The apotropaic remedy used to kill the vampire was to exhume the body of the supposed vampire and, if the body was un-decomposed, remove and burn the blood-filled heart or the entire body.

A corpse was exhumed in Griswold, Connecticut, in the early 1990s that showed evidence of both tuberculosis and postmortem tampering.

Upon opening the grave, the skull and femora were found in a "skull and crossbones" orientation on top of the ribs and vertebrae, which were also found in disarray. On the coffin lid, an arrangement of tacks spelled the initials "JB-55", presumably the initials and age at death of this individual. [Link]

FoodfortheDead.com has more details on the Griswold discovery (including photographs of the gravesite and an artist's reconstruction of what "JB" might have looked like) and on vampire incidents elsewhere in New England. (Flash player is required; click on a town's name to view its gruesome history.)

We Live, We Die, We Decay

Donald and Betty Timberlake recently met their great-great-grandfather for the first time. He was buried in an iron coffin in 1863 and disinterred because of encroaching development on the grounds of his former Virginia plantation. He's now being inspected at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History.

First, Shelley Foote, a specialist in 19th century clothing, examined the corpse.

"He was buried in a suit," she said. "The cutaway coat was typical of a man's daytime wear. It's a little unusual that the lapels have velvet facings. He must have been wearing a cotton shirt because cotton disintegrates quickly and there's no sign of it."

Pathologist Larry Cartmell took samples of hair, fingernails and body tissue, placing them in plastic bags for lab analysis.

"From the hair and fingernails, we can determine what medicines he was taking and how much he used tobacco and alcohol, Cartmell said. "We can do tests to determine how much meat he ate. We will x-ray the teeth to look at that abscess. We will put everything together and attempt to come up with a cause of death."

Asked her thoughts about viewing the remains of her great, great grandfather, Betty Timberlake shrugged. "It's all part of life. We live, we die, we decay." [Link]

Digging Up Il Duce

A cheese factory worker in Italy wants to exhume his grandfather to verify the cause of his death. This wouldn't be international news had Guido Mussolini's grandfather himself been a cheese factory worker and not a notorious Fascist dictator.

A keen amateur historian, Mr Mussolini has been obsessed by his grandfather's fate for years. He has assembled a committee of a dozen historians and lawyers to try to shed some light on it. "I'm not looking for anything, not for revenge, not for money nor anything else," he said. "I just want someone to tell me the forename and surname of the person who killed him in such an ignoble way when they were supposed to hand him over alive to the Americans. Before I die I want to know who I must curse." [Link]

Coincidentally, that's why I started researching my family's history: to find out who I must curse.

The President's Grave-Robbing Grandpa

Members of Skull and Bones—the secret society at Yale to which both President Bushes belonged—reportedly plundered the grave of Apache leader Geronimo about ten years after his death. A letter written by a Bonesman in 1918 recently came to light, in which he bragged that "[t]he skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer is now safe inside the [Tomb] -- together with his well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn." The "Tomb" is the society's clubhouse on the New Haven campus.

Harlyn Geronimo, a former tribal leader who is Geronimo's great grandson, said he trusts the accounts and may pursue legal options to recover his ancestor's remains. He also expects an apology from U.S. President George W. Bush '68, whose grandfather has been implicated as one of the robbers, Geronimo said. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Geneticists Say 'Uncle'

Scientists are 99% certain that a skull dug up from beneath the floor of a Polish cathedral is that of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The only way to know for sure is to match DNA from the skull with that of a known relative—a difficult task, since Copernicus was too busy thumbing his crooked nose at the Pope to father any children.

But researchers think they have a solution. They are now preparing another excavation to look for the remains of Copernicus's uncle, the former bishop of Warmia, who is also believed to be buried in Frombork Cathedral. Exactly where, no one is sure. [Link]

If it turns out they can't positively identify the bishop's remains, I guess they'll just dig up one of his uncles.

Getting a DNA Sample the Hard Way

From The Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star:

Hunley findings bring surprises

By Scott Boyd

Date published: 1/7/2006

"I WORK WITH Civil War remains more than anyone out there," said Dr. Douglas W. Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

[snip]

One of those sailors [on the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley] who might have descendants alive today was none other than Fredericksburg's own Frank Collins. The body of a suspected maternal relative, Edward Clarke Gosnell (1853-1929) was exhumed in 2004 to retrieve some DNA that could be tested against material recovered from Collins' body to see if the men were related. Gosnell has known living relatives.

Owsley showed pictures of the cemetery where Gosnell's grave was opened with the family's permission. Owsley recalled that as he crawled over the opened casket to cut Gosnell's trouser leg to get a sample of bone marrow from the man's thigh bone, the lid fell on him, pushing him partly into the casket with the body. Owsley said this was quite an experience. But he did retrieve the sample he wanted.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]