The discovery came about through new genetic testing done at Harvard Medical School at the request of the Smithsonian.
“We continue to get new insights,” said Henry M. Miller, director of research for Historic St. Mary’s City. “There’s still materials that haven’t been analyzed . . . [and] new methods that come up.”
The baby, whose full name still is not known, is one of hundreds of early Marylanders buried in a large field where the old city once stood, according to the Smithsonian and the Historic St. Mary’s City project.
Evidence suggests that the baby was probably born around November 1682, he said. Two months later, in January 1683, Calvert died, leaving Jane with “a big house . . . and a sick child,” he said.
After the baby’s birth, swaddling had probably blocked the infant’s exposure to sunlight, which led to a vitamin D deficiency and rickets, Owsley said.
Scurvy, from the vitamin C deficiency, often went along with rickets. And the anemia probably came from intentional bloodletting, which was done by physicians of that time to treat disorders, he said.
The baby died about three months after his father, in the spring of 1683, judging by the pine and oak pollen in the coffin.
