Sunday, March 10, 3-5 PM
Lexington Community Center
300 Diamond Street
In 2008, a set of skeletal remains was found in downtown Lexington, determined to be those of a woman of African descent, who died young, sometime in the 19th-century. In a civic ceremony in 2019, the bones of “Miss Jane,” were re-interred in Evergreen Cemetery. In late 2023, new DNA analysis revealed some surprising genetic findings. This data now spurs new questions about her heredity, the migration patterns and timetables that may have brought her to this area, and the broader ‘journeys’ of any descendant lines who may have remained here, or moved on.
During Women’s History Month, join the City of Lexington, the Rockbridge Historical Society, Washington & Lee University Dept. of Anthropology, and the Paleogenomics Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz to hear more about these findings, pose questions to both scientists and historians, and to seed community conversation, ahead. Sunday, March 10, 3 PM; Lexington Community Center, 300 Diamond Street. For more, see RHS Facebook @rockbridgehistory.
For the full news feature, click HERE.
Miss Jane Gravestone. Re-interred at Evergreen Cemetery May 19 2019. 
Miss Jane laying out. (L-R) Ted DeLaney, Erin Schwartz, Maria Quillin. 
Pallbearers carry Miss Jane’s coffin from the carriage to her Evergreen Cemetery gravesite May 19, 2019. 
Flowers on Miss Jane’s coffin at her re-interment at Evergreen Cemetery May 19, 2019.