DNA analysis illuminates the lives of East Marshall Street Well individuals

She had brown eyes and black hair. She was almost 5 feet, 7 inches tall and chewed tobacco. She was in her 20s, carried heavy loads with her left arm and had given birth. We don't know her name, but after her death in the 19th century, her body was stolen and used for anatomical and surgical training by students from the Medical College of Virginia. For more than 100 years, she lay among at least 46 others in a disused well on East Marshall Street in Richmond, before it was hurriedly excavated in 1994 during construction of the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building on Virginia Commonwealth University's campus.