Skeletal remains that washed up decades ago on several Jersey Shore beaches have been identified as belonging to the captain of a 19th century vessel that shipwrecked in the Brigantine Shoal in 1844, New Jersey State Police and researchers from Ramapo College of New Jersey said this week.
The bone fragments are from Henry Goodsell. They were collected over nearly two decades and were first discovered when a skull washed onto a beach in Longport in 1995. More bones were found in Margate in 1999, and additional remains were discovered on the beach in Ocean City in 2013.
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Although authorities were able to determine the remains belonged to a man, his identity and the circumstances of his death were a mystery.
State police partnered with Ramapo College's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in 2023 to explore whether advances in DNA technology could help researchers identify the man.
Undergraduates students traced the man's ancestry back to Connecticut in the 1600's. While searching for a possible link to New Jersey, the researchers scoured newspaper archives to see whether the man could have been aboard a boat that shipwrecked.
Two articles from December 1844 – one in the York Democratic Press and the other in the Boston Daily Bee – reported on the doomed journey of the schooner Oriental that was shipping marble from Connecticut to Philadelphia. The vessel reportedly got caught in a storm, sprung a leak and "broke to pieces" less than a mile from the beach in Brigantine, according to the Daily Bee. There were no survivors, and only one of the bodies of the five crew members was recovered.
"The storm was so tremendous that no help could be given from the shore," the newspaper reported.
The account from the York Democratic Press said the Oriental was bringing 60 tons of marble to Philadelphia to be used for the construction of Girard College, the preparatory boarding school in Fairmount that opened in 1848.
Both of the newspaper clippings included the name Henry Goodsell, the 29-year-old captain of the Oriental. The Ramapo College students suggested state police collect a DNA sample from Goodsell's great-great grandchild, who agreed to assist in the investigation.
In April, DNA taken from the relative was found to be a match with the skeletal samples that had previously been sent to Intermountain Forensics, a nonprofit in Salt Lake City that investigates cold cases.
New Jersey State Police superintendent Col. Patrick J. Callahan called the use of modern genealogy "a powerful reminder" of his agency's commitment to investigating unsolved cases.
“The ability to bring answers to families – even generations later – shows how far science and dedication can take us. Our partnership with Ramapo College has been instrumental in making this possible, and we are incredibly proud of the meaningful progress we continue to make together," Callahan said in a statement on Wednesday..
The IGG Center at Ramapo College has been consulted on 92 cases over the years, including dozens across the United States that remain under investigation. Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Sutherland praised the researchers who contributed to the identification of Goodsell, saying it demonstrates "the power and accuracy" of a technology that can be used to make breakthroughs in cold cases.