Archaeologists started digging in an English church graveyard on Monday in a bid to find out more about a 17th century explorer regarded by historians as one of the unsung founding fathers of the United States. Bartholomew Gosnold was one of the leaders of an expedition which established Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The settlement was the first permanent English colony in the New World.
Gosnold died just four months later but his remains have never been discovered. However, US archaeologists found a skeleton near the site of the settlement two years ago and are trying to establish whether it is his.
They have asked British scientists to take DNA samples from two skeletons, believed to be those of Gosnold's sister Elizabeth and niece Katherine.
The skeletons are buried in two churchyards in Suffolk, eastern England, where Gosnold was born in the village of Grundisburgh in 1572.
If they can match the DNA, scientists hope to prove they have indeed found the remains of an explorer whose significance has, according to historians, long been overlooked.
"It's about getting Gosnold his recognition as one of the founding fathers of the United States," said Nick Clarke, spokesman for the church diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, where records show the two women are buried.
"Gosnold played a leading part in the 1607 expedition and it is largely due to the success of that expedition that the United States speaks English and uses English law as the backbone for its legal system.
"It was that critical. Otherwise, North America might now speak Spanish."
Gosnold first sailed to the New World in 1602, when he explored the eastern coast and named Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard - the latter after his young daughter.
It was on his second trip, five years later, that he helped found Jamestown.
The project to extract DNA from the bones of his relatives is the first of its kind in Britain.
"The Church of England and English Heritage have very strict guidelines regarding access to graves," Clarke said, adding that archaeologists planned to take just one tooth or a tiny shard of bone from each of the skeletons.
"This is a very small scale exploration," he said. "It is not a rummage for bones and it is certainly not an exhumation."
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