The remains of a Victorian-era body found in Sanford 6 years ago has been identified as 24-year-old Edith Patten. According to News Center Maine, the Sanford police department released Patten’s identity to the public in a press conference Wednesday.
Patten’s body was originally discovered by construction workers breaking ground for a new gas station in 2017. The site on Main Street had formerly been a cemetery until the 1930s, when the land had been converted into a playground for the now closed Emerson school.
Patten’s body was somehow left behind in 1931 when all other bodies at Sanford’s Woodlawn Cemetery were relocated.
According to the Portland Press Herald, local historians, led by Paul Auger, teamed up with the DNA Doe Project to identify Patten’s remains.
Patten was initially believed to be a 10-year-old girl when she was first discovered due to the size of her bones, however, forensic genealogy and a database called GEDmatch were able to identify her age and sex as well as several ancestral connections.
From the discovery of Patten’s relatives, researchers were able to narrow down her identity from court records and town census. Patten’s death from tuberculosis was announced in the Biddeford Daily journal in 1891.
The city will soon decide where to rebury her remains, but Auger believes she will likely be placed with a proper marker in Auburn’s Oak Hill Cemetary where the rest of her family is buried.
