Article – Washington Post: “Experts unearth one of the first colonists: A teen with a broken leg”

He was dumped in his grave with little ceremony. He had no coffin, no burial shroud and probably no family to mourn him. He had a broken right leg, and perhaps damaged ribs. His right arm was pulled awkwardly across his chest. And his left hand was clenched in a fist.

He had a square jaw, stood about 5 feet tall and was around 15 years old. And when experts opened his nearly 400-year-old grave last week, they realized they were looking at one of Maryland’s first European settlers — and one of the first colonists in what would become the United States.

Travis Parno, director of research and collections for Historic St. Mary’s City, said the young man could well have been aboard the Ark or the Dove, the ships that brought the first permanent White settlers to the shores of the St. Marys River in March 1634. Parno called the discovery “monumental.”

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