150-year-old corpse identified as woman from first generation of free African Americans

Construction workers discovered the remains in 2011 under an abandoned lot in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York.

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PBS explored the fascinating life of Martha Peterson, whose 150-year-old corpse was found buried in an iron coffin in an abandoned lot in Elmhurst, Queens in New York City in 2011.

The new documentary The Woman in the Iron Coffin followed a team of “forensic experts as they investigate the preserved remains of a young African American woman from 19th century New York,“ born decades before the Civil War on church grounds founded in 1830 by the first generation of free African-Americans, according to PBS.

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Construction workers discovered Peterson’s remains buried under an abandoned lot in Elmhurst. The body was so well preserved that workers called 911, concerned it could be a recent homicide, the report noted.

Scott Warnasch, former New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner forensic archaeologist, told the New York Post: “It was recorded as a crime scene. A buried body on an abandoned lot sounds pretty straightforward.’”

Forensic scientists were shocked to discover that the body actually belonged to a young African-American woman who died from smallpox a few years after New York abolished slavery, the report states. The iron coffin kept Peterson in such excellent condition that even the smallpox lesions were still apparent, the report said.

“The body was so well preserved that I would not have been shocked if the smallpox virus had survived,” Warnasch said, The Daily Mail wrote.

A CT scan of her skull was used to create an image of what Peterson would have looked like while she was still alive, the report said.

Peterson’s remains were reportedly given a proper burial by the Saint Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church of Jackson Heights in 2016.

The Woman in the Iron Coffin is scheduled to premiere Wednesday on PBS. Click here for viewing details.

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