Coosaw: a Charleston teenager with a Native mother's line, buried among Africans, 1760–1790 (Anson Street African Burial Ground, Charleston, SC; published 2023)

SUMMARYCoosaw: a Charleston teenager with a Native mother's line, buried among Africans, 1760–1790 (Anson Street African Burial Ground, Charleston, SC; published 2023) [Connections: Genetics (honest), Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDFleskes, Gilmore, Juarez, Oubré, Ofunniyin, Schurr and others, "Community-engaged ancient DNA project reveals diverse origins of 18th-century African descendants in Charleston, South Carolina," PNAS 120(3), 9 Jan. 2023. The burial ground was active about AD 1760–1790; DNA came from 31 of 36 ancestors. Of 27 mitogenomes, 24 fall in haplogroups L0–L3, common in African populations and "also found in contemporary African American populations." One adolescent, given the honorary name Coosaw (CHS24), was born locally (strontium), carried the Native American maternal haplogroup A2, and showed "approximately a third" of his ancestry similar to populations in the Americas. The authors write that this "attests to a multigenerational presence of African-descended individuals" who interacted with Indigenous North Americans in the early colonial South. The Gullah Society and the Charleston Black community decided the research would go ahead and pushed for reburial; data are under controlled access to block commercial use

PATTERNa burial ground the colonial record would file as "Negro" holds a Native maternal line, in a local-born child, before 1790

LENS (WW9)Renamed Black. Born Aboriginal. Coosaw is that sentence in one grave

OPENthe paper does not name the Native population behind Coosaw's line or explain the honorary name; the authors say family details "may never be fully reconstructed without direct archival documentation."

SOURCEFleskes et al. 2023, NSF Public Access PDF.