Beneath a small Maryland field, more than 400 people were buried during the 17th century at St. Mary’s City’s Brick Chapel cemetery. Most graves went unmarked. For three centuries, 49 of those skeletons lay without names, without records — their identities apparently lost for good.
Now, a first-of-its-kind genetic study suggests that may no longer be true. Researchers applied a form of ancient DNA analysis never before attempted without prior historical leads, and the results have already redrawn what forensic and historical science can realistically claim to recover.
A cemetery full of unknowns
St. Mary’s City was founded in 1634 by English colonists seeking religious refuge. It became Maryland’s first capital and the fourth permanent European settlement in British North America — a place of genuine historical weight. Yet for most of the people who lived and died there, history kept no record at all.
Over 400 colonists were buried at the Brick Chapel cemetery, the overwhelming majority in unmarked graves. Archaeologists have worked the site for decades, carefully excavating and cataloging what they found. Without names, documents, or identifying markers, though, most remains simply stayed anonymous.
“Most people, as you can imagine, came over, lived and died without a single word being written about their life,” says Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and a co-senior author of the study. The bones were present. The people behind them were not.
How 11.5 million genetic profiles unlocked 17th-century identities
The new study, published in Current Biology, took a different approach. Researchers extracted DNA from 49 skeletons and compared it against genetic data voluntarily shared by more than 11.5 million users of 23andMe. The scale of that reference database made something genuinely new possible.
The method relied on identifying identical-by-descent DNA segments — stretches of genetic code shared because individuals descend from a common ancestor. Longer shared segments indicate a more recent connection; shorter ones point to more distant kinship. Together, they allowed researchers to map a full spectrum of relatedness between the ancient remains and living people.
What emerged: more than 1.3 million living Americans carry detectable genetic ties to these 17th-century colonists. Of those, roughly 9,000 are considered very likely direct descendants or close relatives. Crucially, this is the first time ancient DNA has been used to identify unknown individuals without any prior historical hypothesis about who they might be.
Six families, one multigenerational surprise
When researchers mapped the genetic relationships among the 49 individuals, the group clustered into six distinct genetic families. One stretched across multiple generations — a finding that caught the research team off guard.
“People came over to the New World, and really their lives were often short,” Owsley told Smithsonian magazine. Conditions were harsh, disease was common, and early death was the norm. A multigenerational family line surviving long enough to leave multiple members in the same cemetery wasn’t what anyone expected.
Yet the evidence was there. Researchers traced a grandfather who arrived with the first wave of settlers, then his son, then his granddaughter — all buried in the same small plot. The cemetery wasn’t just a community burial site. For some families, it was a place they kept returning to across decades.
Faces behind the bones: a governor, a child, and two forgotten laborers
Three closely related individuals drew particular attention. Researchers asked living participants with strong genetic ties to share genealogical records, then looked for overlaps in the resulting family trees. Combined with isotopic evidence and archaeological context, the analysis led to a tentative identification: one skeleton may belong to Thomas Greene, Maryland’s second governor, with the other two potentially being his wife Anne and their son Leonard.
“We didn’t go into this study searching for Thomas Greene,” said Henry Miller, a senior research fellow at Historic St. Mary’s City. “But when the genetics team brought this name to me, it was remarkable how well the historical and archaeological records supported this potential identification.” The researchers are careful to call it tentative — more work remains.
One other find stands out. An approximately 8-year-old boy of primarily African ancestry — born in North America, likely buried between 1666 and 1705 — was interred in a carefully crafted gable-lidded coffin among individuals of predominantly European ancestry. Two young men, probably Irish immigrants in their 20s, were buried haphazardly and without coffins. Skeletal evidence suggests those men endured grueling physical labor consistent with indentured servitude. The contrast raises layered questions about race, status, and the brutal hierarchies of early colonial life.
What bones can say that history books cannot
Beyond DNA, the research team analyzed each skeleton for age, sex, diet, and physical health, building biographical profiles that exist nowhere in the written record. The study builds on earlier work at the same site: in 1992, Owsley helped excavate three lead coffins, eventually identifying the remains of Philip Calvert, Maryland’s fifth governor, and his first wife, Anne Wolseley Calvert.
Owsley has now worked the St. Mary’s City site for nearly 50 years. “If you’d have told me, even ten years ago, that we would be able to do this, I would have not thought that possible.”
What this study ultimately offers is a chance to restore some measure of personhood to people the historical record simply forgot — settlers who crossed an ocean, raised families, and died without leaving a single written trace. How many other forgotten lives are waiting in the ground, and what might we owe them for the asking?