About 200 people, all a part of a group called the Pike Family Association, are looking for answers about their most famous namesake.
Brigadier General Zebulon Pike was a War of 1812 hero who discovered the famous Pike's Peak in Colorado. His grave sits in Sackets Harbor, New York, at the Military Cemetery, but a recent study showed that officials are not 100 percent sure it's actually Pike's body in the grave. They're hoping for closure.
"When we found out that the Army wasn't totally sure who was buried in the grave, we said DNA can answer that question,” said Stu Pike of the Pike Family Association.
So, the Pike Family Association is asking the Village of Sackets Harbor for permission to dig up the grave and test any DNA.
Really? Hey, I am as interested in genealogy and in DNA as the next person; but do they REALLY want to dig up the old boy's bones just to satisfy their curiosity? This one sounds a bit macabre to me. Can't they let the man lie in peace?
The digging up of bodies to test DNA is rather common these days although usually for rather serious purposes. Bodies of unknown soldiers are exhumed and tested for DNA to identify the remains and to provide closure to their loved ones. That strikes me as a good idea.
A few bodies have been exhumed and tested for medical purposes. That strikes me as a good idea.
Some bodies have been dug up to satisfy historical questions. Poor Billy the Kid seems to get dug up about once a decade. I am not so sure if that's a reasonable practice or not.
But these folks want to dig up their ancestor just to see if it is really him in the grave!
Let's look at this from another angle: would you want your descendants to dig up YOUR body 150 or 200 years from now, just to satisfy their curiosity about you?
You can read more in an article by Brian Dwyer in the News 10 Now web site at http://news10now.com/content/all_news/474692/family-petitions-town-to-dig-up-war-hero.
If the Army isn't sure it's Pike in the grave, how is this different from any other unknown identification?
Posted by: Jason Presley | June 17, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Having only recently learned that National Cemeteries are quite free to "realign" headstones at anytime they choose in order to re-establish their own notions of symmetry, I can understand the Army saying they don't know who is in the grave. I'm afraid what they are really saying is they can't guarantee that the headstone/marker is actually on, over or even near the original burial plot. When a family learned this reality their anger and frustration over the actual location of their loved one in the Ft. Gibson National Cemetery made the front page of the local newspaper on Memorial Day.
Posted by: Linda | June 18, 2009 at 07:36 AM
Is anyone specializing in exhuming dead ancestors to get DNA samples when all other traditional methods of confirming ancestry have failed?
Posted by: Len Davidson | June 30, 2009 at 08:03 PM