Archaeological research facilities at Historic St. Mary's City, Maryland.
The burial site designated No. 56 included a skull and a jumble of arm and leg bones that had been laid to rest in a wooden box just outside the walls of the old Jesuit chapel in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, more than 300 years ago.
Experts could tell they were the remains of a white man who seemed to be about 40 when he died. There were no other clues in the box. No remnants of clothes. Nothing in the historical record. No hint of who he was.
But his 300-year-old bones still held a genetic connection via his DNA to modern-day descendants that scientists say, in a first, has helped them figure out who he may have been.
The experts say burial No. 56 was probably Leonard Greene, the son of Maryland’s second colonial governor, Thomas Greene, and his first wife, Anne Cox. Leonard Greene died around 1688.
