Using new DNA technologies, scientists have identified the historical remains of American Founding Father George Washington’s family. The fragmentary bones from Harewood family cemetery in West Virginia belong to George Washington’s grandnephews, Samuel Walter Washington and George Steptoe Washington Jr., and their mother, Lucy Payne Washington.
What next?
Scientists now plan to validate the advanced DNA analysis techniques in their ongoing efforts to identify the remains of members of the US troops who died around the world in past conflicts as far back as the Second World War.
The findings were published in the journal iScience.
“The ability to test historical samples such as the Harewood Cemetery remains allows us to evaluate and improve the methodologies applied to our casework samples that are of similar quality to historical remains, and often times even more degraded,” first author Courtney Cavagnino of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFMES-AFDIL) at the Dover Air Force Base, said in an official statement.
“This particular case gave us an opportunity to test methods for extended kinship prediction that we developed using a set of known, degraded DNA samples needing identity confirmation,” senior author Charla Marshall, Deputy Director of DoD DNA Operations, said.
“Our laboratory is currently validating these novel methods to be used in routine casework.”
AFMES-AFDIL is the US Department of Defense’s only human remains DNA laboratory. It supports day-to-day operations as well as the mission to ascertain the identity of troop members from past conflicts extending back to World War II.
In the latest study, the AFMES-AFDIL team set out to identify remains from unmarked grave sites at Harewood Cemetery.
Scientists performed a range of DNA tests of the suspected remains of individuals of interest, including George Washington’s family members.
They correlated its results with analyses of the DNA from a living descendant, S.W. Washington.
The article originally appeared on WION.