Revolutionary-era soldier's skull found (Connecticut)
A 1907 catalog of the New Haven County Historical Society listed several rare and odd items, including a necklace from an Egyptian mummy, slave chains, a small block of wood from the Old South Bridge in Concord, Mass., which the British guarded at the start of the Revolutionary War.
But lot 23 in the inventory -- "a skull of an American soldier, one of 42 who died of the 200 in a destitute and sickly condition that were brought from a British prison ship ... and suddenly cast upon the shore of the town of Milford on the 1st of January, 1777" -- has sparked contemporary patriots to ride to the rescue.
Local history buffs Gary Gianotti and Tom Beirne have tracked down the skull, which has been in the possession of the University of Connecticut's archaeology department in Storrs since the early 1990s, when a state law prohibited private museums from owning human remains.
Nicholas Bellantoni, the state archaeologist, will have students do a forensic study of the skull and write a report of its condition.
Read entire article at Connecticut Post
But lot 23 in the inventory -- "a skull of an American soldier, one of 42 who died of the 200 in a destitute and sickly condition that were brought from a British prison ship ... and suddenly cast upon the shore of the town of Milford on the 1st of January, 1777" -- has sparked contemporary patriots to ride to the rescue.
Local history buffs Gary Gianotti and Tom Beirne have tracked down the skull, which has been in the possession of the University of Connecticut's archaeology department in Storrs since the early 1990s, when a state law prohibited private museums from owning human remains.
Nicholas Bellantoni, the state archaeologist, will have students do a forensic study of the skull and write a report of its condition.