George Washington’s Descendants ID’d From Bones in Unmarked Graves

A historical mystery about the final resting places of George Washington’s younger brother, Samuel, and Samuel’s family has been partially solved thanks to a DNA study.

The research, published in the journal iScience, identified the first president’s grandnephews—George Steptoe Washington Jr. and Dr. Samuel Walter Washington—and their mother, Lucinda “Lucy” Payne—based on skeletal remains found in unmarked graves at a cemetery in Samuel Washington’s Harewood estate near Charles Town in West Virginia.

Researchers looking for Samuel’s final resting place had excavated five unmarked graves at the estate in 1999. The dig found small bones and teeth that had badly degraded over the decades, and DNA testing at the time gave inconclusive results.

Read more at The Daily Beast.