Posted on 03/08/2009 11:23:26 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Yes. Probably not so difficult to identify them as British from scraps of uniforms and buttons. In some cases DNA could be extracted from teeth, but what to match it to?
Same mistake that Bonnie Prince Charlie made at Culloden (against the advice of Lord George Murray, who probably could have won the war for him if he’d listened to him. But old Charlie never listened to anything except the brandy bottle . . . )
Repatriate them were? They could have been English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish or even American Colonial Loyalists....
You might be interested in this.
Also. IIRC, isotope ratios in the teeth can pin down country of origin fairly well.
There are people who spend their time cataloguing all the variations in regimental uniforms from the dawn of time down to the present day (in fact there's a publisher who does nothing else and makes a good living at it).
I don't know anything about the various German regiments, but given the German penchant for organization I would assume that buttons, buckles, helmet badges and so forth would give a positive identification of the unit. If there are still muster rolls or casualty lists around it might be possible to identify them by name, at least as a group.
DNA probably wouldn't be much help because there was wave after wave of German settlers in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area from earliest times right up to the American Revolution.
See post 25?
Not as many Germans up Boston way, so if there were a strong German component in the DNA it might be highly suggestive. But I think the coat buttons and cap badges (which would be extremely well preserved) would be dispositive.
I took all the archaeology courses I could in school -- what an opportunity for a "dig" for a local school!
Unlikely American Loyalists...they were Grenadiers and highly trained. They could have been Scots, Irish or Welsh; more likely Scots since they are a bigger bunch, and there was a height requirement.
18th c metrosexuals....
I was just thinking — couldn’t they use ground penetrating radar to do a preliminary survey without messing up Mrs. McMahon’s rosebushes? The disturbed ground of a grave would make a really big blip (of course, so would a disused cesspool . . . . )
You better believe it. They were a really weird bunch. Normal people suggested that they were more than “metro”sexual . . . . and of course the contemporary cartoonists had a field day with them.
Bonnie Prince Charlie’s cause was doomed from the start. Even if he had taken London, it would only have been a matter of time before a rebellion in England would have turfed him out again. The Stuarts were widely hated because they represented monarchical despotism and backwardness to your average protestant Englishman of that time. He had hoped to recruit Englishmen to his cause, especially from the considerable Catholic population in Lancashire and Preston in particular, but the results were disappointing. He never really seemed to appreciate just how much he and the Stuarts were despised by the majority of the English population...
As for Culloden, he had no choice but to fight, he was being hotly pursued by Cumberland’s forces and it was only a matter of time before he had to stand and face them, and his army was deteriorating all the time. He might well have pulled off another victory if Cumberland hadn’t already prepared his forces to deal with the ‘Highland Charge’ by getting the redcoats to bayonet the man to his right instead of directly in front of him....
I think that a determined campaign probably would have wound up with a dissolution of the Union, not a restoration to the throne of England. The 'marriage' between the Presbyterians of Scotland and the Anglicans of England was almost as shaky as that between the Lowland Presbys and the Highland Catholics and nonjuring Episcopalians.
In retrospect everybody's for "the glorious House of Hanover/and Protestant Succession", but it was by no means much liked at the time. George I was frankly German and George II not much better ("and him with two biddies that you'd not be seen talking to on a dark road, and one of them shaking with fat and the other as thin as bedamned" - stolen from Donn Byrne)
The Irish were well known for having some of the largest and best nourished working class people in Europe at this time, in spite of, or actually because of their heavy reliance on the potato, which was extremely nutritious and a balanced meal almost in it’s own right...
They may have been buried there, but given their proximity to the ocean and a marsh I doubt if there is anything left down there but a few pieces of rust.
I’ve stood on the battlefield, by the way, and a worse place for a light mobile military force, dependent on speed of onslaught, I can’t imagine. Nasty overgrown boggy ground, very rough and uneven.
The most popular thing about the Hanovarians was the fact that they weren’t Catholic Stuarts. As long as the Hanovarians were content to let the Bill of Rights and primacy of Parliament stand, they might not have been popular, but they were a much better alternative to the Stuarts.
As for the Scots, is a well known fact that more Scots fought against Bonnie Prince Charlie than with him, he wasn’t that popular with lowland Scots.
Basically, I doubt BPC could have held on to England, and if he couldn’t hold on to England, there is no way he would have held on in Scotland. Like I said, his cause was doomed from the start, even if he had managed to seize London...
Brass keeps beautifully intact even (especially) in boggy ground. If there’s salt or acid in the soil brass and copper will corrode, but careful excavation will reveal the original outlines in the corrosion products.
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