UK graves may shed light on U.S. founding father
By Gideon Long
LONDON (Reuters) -
Archaeologists started digging in an
English church graveyard
on Monday in a bid to find out more about a 17th century
explorer regarded by historians as one of the unsung founding
fathers of the United States.
Bartholomew Gosnold was one of the leaders of an
expedition which established Jamestown,
Virginia, in 1607.
The settlement was the first permanent
English colony in
the New World.
Gosnold died just four months later but his remains have never been discovered. However, U.S. archaeologists found a
skeleton near the site of the settlement two years ago and
are trying to establish whether it is his. They have asked British scientists to take DNA samples from two skeletons, believed to be those of Gosnold’s sister Elizabeth and niece Katherine. The skeletons are buried in two churchyards in
Suffolk, eastern
England, where Gosnold was born in the village of Grundisburgh in 1572.
If they can match the DNA, scientists hope to prove
they have indeed found the remains of an explorer whose
significance has, according to historians, long been
overlooked.
“It’s about getting Gosnold his recognition as one of the
founding fathers of the United States,†said
Nick Clarke,
spokesman for the church diocese of St Edmundsbury and
Ipswich, where records show the two women are buried.
“Gosnold played a leading part in the 1607 expedition and it
is largely due to the success of that expedition that the United States speaks
English and uses
English law as the backbone for its legal system. “It was that critical. Otherwise, North
America might now speak Spanish.â€
Gosnold first sailed to the New World in 1602, when he
explored the eastern coast and named Cape Cod and Martha’s
Vineyard -- the latter after his young daughter. It was on his second trip, five years later, that he helped found Jamestown.
The project to extract DNA from the bones of his relatives
is the first of its kind in
Britain