Jane McCrea Has Been Exhumed ... Again
Bill Schenley
An archaeological team exhumed skeletal remains from the
grave of an 18th-century woman whose death during the
Revolutionary War turned her into an early American icon.
Excavation work at Jane McCrea's purported grave site began
before dawn in a snow-covered cemetery where two workers
used a chain hoist to remove the half-ton marble tombstone.
The 5-foot-tall marker says McCrea was 17 when she was
killed by Indians in 1777, but nearly everything about her --
including her age, appearance and cause of death -- are open
to historical debate. There's also speculation that she may be
buried elsewhere, or that her remains were mingled with others
interred when the cemetery was built in 1852.
The first break in the mystery came several hours into the
digging, when one of the volunteer members of the
archaeological crew uncovered the top of a skull buried about 5
feet below the surface.
"That's a bone," said Matthew Rozell, a local high school
teacher working on the project under the direction of David
Starbuck, an assistant professor of anthropology at New
Hampshire's Plymouth State College.
Small pieces of bone, coffin nails and shredded wood were also
uncovered. It was too soon to determine just whose skull was
unearthed.
"The worst thing is jumping to a quick judgment," Starbuck said
before adding that he found the discovery "encouraging."
Starbuck received permission last year from a 98-year-old
descendant of McCrea to exhume her remains in an attempt to
answer some of the mystery surrounding her death.
"It's great to be able to make her more real to people. Right now
she's an abstract," said Dr. Lowell J. Levine, a dental forensic
expert at the state police laboratory.
Levine helped identify the remains of Nazi war criminal Josef
Mengele in 1985, six years after the infamous Auschwitz doctor
drowned in South America. For the McCrea project, Levine is
leading a forensics team that includes his wife, Cathryn, a hair
and fiber expert, and Dr. Anthony Falsetti, director of the Human
Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida.
The team will use samples from the bones to extract DNA and
attempt to confirm that McCrea is in fact buried in the grave in
this Hudson River town 45 miles north of Albany.
A study of the remains could also reveal her age, height and how
she died, Levine said.
DNA testing is expected to take several weeks. Starbuck said a
DNA sample is needed from a McCrea descendent from the
family's maternal line to prove her remains are buried in Fort
Edward.
As the day wore on, the scientists found the grave contained the
commingled remains of two women. Starbuck believes they were
McCrea and Sarah McNeil, an older woman with whom McCrea
had once lived. The two friends were captured together, but
McNeil survived the ordeal and died some time after the
Revolutionary War.
But only one skull was found in the grave, McNeil's, and it
confirms accounts that say she was buried in one of McCrea's
earlier resting places, Starbuck said.
Laboratory testing will help determine identities, but some
questions may never be answered. "The cause of death?
Probably not," Starbuck said.
According to most historical accounts, McCrea was killed here
by British-allied Indians in the summer of 1777, just weeks before
the Americans faced the redcoats in one of history's most
significant battles.
Some historians contend that news of her slaying enraged the
faltering Americans and rallied them to nearby Bemis Heights,
where the Continental Army and militias defeated the British
and their German allies at the Battles of Saratoga.
The victory at Saratoga convinced the French to fight against
the British, providing enough support for the Americans to win
their war of independence six years later.
In the decades after the war, McCrea's image evolved from a
young if nondescript frontier woman to a statuesque beauty
with flowing, blondish hair. Artwork depicting her demise at the
hands of two tomahawk-wielding Indians was popular in the 19th
century as the nation expanded westward and fought with
various American Indian tribes.
But the exact details of her death remained murky, and it wasn't
certain that her remains survived intact after two previous moves
from other burial sites in Fort Edward. The second reburial
occurred in 1852, when parts of her skeleton were reportedly
pilfered by souvenir hunters.
At 98, Mary McCrea Deeter of Wichita, Kan., is believed to be
the oldest living McCrea descendant. Long interested in the story
of her famous ancestor, she agreed to the exhumation. Her
grandson, Ben Williams, even traveled from Richland, Wash., to
witness the dig.
By nightfall, with samples of the remains removed, a Presbyterian
service was held and the bones of the two women were reburied.
They remain together, as they had been for more than 150 years,
but in a modern pine coffin.
---
The character, Cora, in James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the
Mohicans" was based on Jane McCrea.
John Vanderlyn's "Death of Jane McCrea" ...
http://www.4peaks.com/fkmcrea1.htm
Steve Miller - A Famous Rock Star!
nice piece, painted by an early American master - more or less of the same vintage as Benjamin West. I wrote
about him in GoodBye! recently in my survey of the deaths of 1852.
(http://www.goodbyemag.com/jul02/history.html)
The lengthiest obituary the New-York Times ran in September, 1852, was that of the artist John Vanderlyn,
who died on September 24 in penury at the upstate Kingston Hotel. Vanderlyn's ought to have been
a great success story. Aaron Burr discovered his talent when young John was working at a print gallery in
New York. Burr financed his art education on the continent, and Vanderlyn became reasonably competent in the
French neoclassical style. His painting The Death of Jane McCrea at the hands of Indians was a sensation
back home, and his depiction of Marius on the Ruins of Carthage was a favorite of Napoleon's. His
portrayal of a nude Ariadne was a scandal to puritanical American tastes, and as a result he was unable to
sell the painting for years. By the time of his death nudes were more acceptable, and the
obituary's author called the work "the finest specimen of his genius." When
Vanderlyn returned home in 1815 he found popular success with a painting of Niagara Falls, which sold widely
as an engraving. It was to remain the standard popular view of the falls until Frederic Church's
masterpiece surpassed it, in 1867. Vanderlyn executed portraits of American politicians that hang today in
the National Portrait Gallery. He then turned to the panoramic exhibitions so popular in that age. He
operated for a time a rotunda gallery in City Hall Park, where he exhibited large pictures of the
world's capital cities. "But pecuniary embarrassment forced him to relinquish the
undertaking," the obituary said. "He never quite recovered from the difficulties
brought upon his finances and energies by this failure."
Church's view of Niagara was on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art last year. It is amazing.
The Atheneum has a >
>John Vanderlyn's "Death of Jane McCrea" ...
>
>http://www.4peaks.com/fkmcrea1.htm
>
>
>
>
--
Steve Miller
Editor and Chief Copyboy
Goodbye! The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries - http://www.goodbyemag.com
If in NYC, buy the Sun and read the obits!
Bill Schenley
> Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford. It's a really nice piece,
> painted by an early American master - more or less of the
> same vintage as Benjamin West. I wrote about him in
> GoodBye! recently in my survey of the deaths of 1852.
> (http://www.goodbyemag.com/jul02/history.html)
> The lengthiest obituary the New-York Times ran in
> September, 1852, was that of the artist John Vanderlyn, who
> died on September 24 in penury at the upstate Kingston Hotel.
> Vanderlyn's ought to have been a great success story. Aaron
> Burr discovered his talent when young John was working at
> a print gallery in New York. Burr financed his art education on
> the continent ...
<snipped>
Vanderlyn was often linked romantically to Aaron Burr, but
there was never any substance to the rumors.
Vanderlyn's portrait of Aaron Burr:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burr1.GIF
Anyway, thanks. Terrific article.
> Church's view of Niagara was on view at the Pennsylvania
> Academy of Art last year. It is amazing.
Yep.