DNA From a 17th-Century Maryland Chapel Reveals Two Governors and a Mysterious Boy’s Burial

Genetic analysis of 49 sets of remains buried at a 17th-century Maryland chapel has identified two of the colony’s early governors and raised new questions about an 8-year-old boy of majority African ancestry buried among the settlement’s elite families.

The remains come from St Mary’s City, founded in 1634 as the capital of colonial Maryland by settlers fleeing religious persecution in England. By 1667, colonists had built the Brick Chapel, and decades of excavation there have uncovered dozens of burials, including three rare lead coffins. The study, published this week in the journal Current Biology, confirmed Philip Calvert, Maryland’s fifth colonial governor, was buried there with his wife Anne Wolseley Calvert and an infant son, and identified Thomas Greene, the second governor, whose burial site had never previously been confirmed — matched through the 23andMe genetic database and genealogical records.

Among the burials, an 8-year-old boy who died between 1667 and 1704 stood out: DNA showed largely African-derived ancestry with roughly a quarter to a third European ancestry, and isotope analysis of his bones indicated he was born in America. He was buried in a shroud and gable-lidded coffin following English customs typically used for elite settlers, rather than the separate, unmarked burials usually given to enslaved people — leading researchers to suggest he may not have been enslaved, while cautioning that the line between indentured servitude and enslavement for African-descended people at the time was often blurred.

Two other burials belonged to young men in their twenties, likely recent Irish immigrants based on chemical signatures in their bones. Neither was buried in a coffin, and their skeletons showed signs of heavy labour and poor health consistent with indentured servitude, a common status among white immigrants of the era.

Most of the remains traced back to western England and Wales, and cross-referencing the ancient DNA with modern databases turned up more than 1.3 million living genetic relatives of the founding population, with the largest cluster of over 200 people tracing to Kentucky through the postwar migration of Maryland’s Catholic families.