Mystery Solved: Mysterious Jamestown Settlers Identified

Four lost leaders of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas have been identified, thanks to chemical analysis of their skeletons, as well as historical documents.

The settlement leaders were mostly high-status men who were buried at the 1608 Jamestown church in Virginia. And all played pivotal roles in the early colony.

“They’re very much at the heart of the foundation of the America that we know today,” said Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who helped identify the bodies . . .

One of the men was Ferdinando Weyman, who died in 1610 at around age 34. He was the uncle of Sir Thomas West, the governor of Virginia. Weyman was also related to another of the men identified, Captain William West. This man perished in 1610 after a fight with the Powhatan Indians. . . Both West and Weyman were buried in human-shaped coffins with a distinctive pattern of nails. . .

Another of the newly identified men was Captain Gabriel Archer, who died during the starving time in 1609 at the age of 34. . .The last man of the group was Reverend Robert Hunt. Unlike the more affluent men, he was buried in a simple shroud, facing west, toward the congregation he headed. Hunt died in 1608 around the age of 39. (Read more from “Mystery Solved: Identities of Mysterious Jamestown Settlers Identified” HERE)

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