Identifications; 6 May 2026

I am thrilled today to be able to share an update on the DNA study being done to identify the men who died on the Franklin expedition.

If you’re on my blog I assume you already know about the Gladman Point skeleton, but if not, here’s a summary: In 1859 a skeleton was discovered at Gladman Point on King William Island, alongside a comb, a clothes brush, and, significantly, a pocketbook of papers. This pocketbook is the only “journal” from the Franklin expedition found, but most of it is unreadable due to damage. The pocketbook contained the seaman's certificate of Henry Peglar, Captain of the Foretop, and as such the pocketbook has been attributed to him, as were the remains, initially.

However, the remains of his clothes, down to the way his neckerchief was knotted, indicated that this body belonged to a steward, which Peglar was not. The fact that this person carried a clothes brush with him seemed to support that idea. So who was this? Was this steward a friend of Peglar who was trying to bring his journal home to his family? Was it Peglar himself, heavily demoted, or dressing as a steward for some other reason? 

 

Wallet of notes. Wooden clothes brush with ivory veneer. Fragment of white patterned cotton shirt. Fragments of a knotted black silk neckerchief. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

 

The skeleton was unknowingly rediscovered in 1973, shipped to a museum in Ottawa, and, embarrassingly, lost. The site was re-examined in 2019, and small bones, such as a metatarsal, were found. 

(You know I’ve broken one bone in my life, and it was a metatarsal?)

Luckily, those bones yielded viable DNA, and today I can reveal that, after years of speculation, testing indicates that the body is indeed that of Henry Peter Peglar, Captain of the Foretop.

 

Captain McClintock finding Henry Peglar's skeleton in the snow. Illustrated Times, 15 October 1859.

But that’s not the only news I have to share today.

Previously, only two identifications had been made by comparing DNA from skeletal remains attributed to the expedition with DNA from living descendants of a common ancestor: Captain James Fitzjames, and Engineer John Gregory, both of Erebus. Today, I can confirm that an additional three men, aside from Peglar, have also been identified. The other three are Able Seaman William Orren, Subordinate Officers’ Steward John Bridgens, and Ship’s Boy David Young.

With this, we now have six men in total who have been identified through DNA analysis. Five of them died around a small section of the coast of Erebus Bay, and, interestingly, were all from the Erebus. The last, Peglar, was from the Terror, and died at Gladman Point as mentioned above.

 

 Map of King William Island taken from "DNA analysis of human skeletal remains from the 1845 Franklin expedition" by D. Stenton, A. Keenleyside, S. Fratpietro, and R. Park. Edited to add Gladman Point and the approximate location of NdLe-16.

  

Orren, Bridgens, and Young were all found at archeological sites that were not far from one another. The three sites where they were found on the coast of Erebus Bay are known as NgLj-1, NgLj-2, and NgLj-3.

Skeletal remains for at least three people were found near NgLj-1. We know now that William Orren was among them. He was matched to a humerus that showed signs of damage by animal scavenging, so his humerus may have been deposited there from another site. 

David Young’s skeletal remains were found at NgLj-2, one of two “boat places” in Erebus Bay. This one was found by Inuit in 1861 and reported by Charles Francis Hall. The remains at this site represent at least 13 people, including James Fitzjames. We know cannibalism occurred at this site, though there is no evidence of it in the few bones able to be attributed to Young. Young’s jaw was initially estimated to belong to someone 12-15 years old, however we know now that was incorrect, as Young would have been around twenty when he died.

 

The tomb now housing the remains at NgLj-2. © 2012 - Ron Carlson.

The remains found at NgLj-3, the second “boat place” in Erebus Bay, represent at least three people. We know now that two of them were John Gregory and John Bridgens. At this site, two bodies were found inside a boat by the McClintock expedition in 1859. The third was presumably near the boat but buried by snow and not found at that time. Due to the theorized ages of the two in the boat, and the ages of Gregory and Bridgens, it may be that Gregory was one of the two in the boat, and Bridgens may be the one buried in snow. 

 

Lieutenant Hobson of the McClintock expedition finding the remains at NgLj-3. Harper's Weekly, issue 3, 1859. From the collection of Russell Potter. 

You can read more about the identifications of Bridgens, Orren, and Young in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. You can read more about the identification of Peglar in the Polar Record. I was involved in writing the biographical sections of the papers, and was the genealogist who traced the families of the four sailors, and reached out to living collateral descendants to inform them of the study and invite them to participate. 

I’m not officially affiliated with any of the academic institutions involved in the DNA study – my genealogy research is done as a third-party volunteer with an interest in the Franklin expedition. As such, I have no professional historical or archeological insight to offer. Why did Peglar die while dressed as a steward? Is it a coincidence that so far all men identified in Erebus Bay are from Erebus, or does it imply that the ship companies separated at some point? I’d suggest that you read the above papers, and I’ll leave those questions for better-educated minds than mine to answer!

 

A Self-Indulgent Personal Response To The Identifications

On July 19, 2025, at 10:19 AM, I received an email.

Dear Katie,

I was wondering if you could let me know when might be a convenient time to call you about the Franklin expedition DNA research, and at what number you can be reached.

Best regards,
Doug

I’d been talking with Dr. Douglas Stenton over email for about nine months at that point. In September of 2024 it was announced that the remains of Captain James Fitzjames of the Erebus had been identified, and what’s more, that this happened because a third party named Fabiënne Tetteroo had found a Fitzjames descendant and pointed him towards the DNA study being conducted by Douglas R. Stenton, Stephen Fratpietro, and Robert W. Park. I’d heard about the ongoing DNA study, but it never occurred to me that someone not officially involved in it could just do that.

The previous summer I’d read the autobiography of a woman named Barbara Rae-Venter, a retired patent attorney who began doing genealogy as a hobby in her retirement and ended up becoming a pioneer in the field of forensic genetic genealogy, and is now tracking down serial killers who’ve evaded justice for decades. I’d first heard of her from an excellent podcast called Bear Brook (season 1), which I highly recommend as a quick overview of genetic genealogy and the changing landscape of DNA analysis.

Anyway, because of her book, I was very aware of how genealogy was a field in which amateurs and hobbyists could make great strides. With that in mind, when I was reading about what Ms. Tetteroo did, I kept thinking to myself: “Wait, could I do this?”

A bit of a hubristic thought, to be sure. Fabiënne Tetteroo was a historian writing her thesis on James Fitzjames. Unlike her, I don’t have a degree in any relevant field. I’m not a historian, or archeologist, or anthropologist, or geneticist, or anything even tangentially related to this type of thing – I’m a software developer. But I thought it’d be an interesting thing to try, so on 14 Oct 2024 I emailed Dr. Douglas Stenton some questions about his research, and then I took off running.

I’d never done genealogy before, aside from just randomly googling my surname and seeing what popped up. I quickly discovered that I love it. It tickles the same puzzle-loving part of my brain that programming does. And while I may not have any relevant education, I’m a complete shut-in during the cold Saskatchewan winters, so I had nothing but time to figure things out. 

I have no real knowledge of genetics – the most education I have related to that domain was high school biology a couple of decades ago – but before I reached out to Dr. Stenton the first time, I wanted to at least attempt to not sound like a total idiot, so I read a lot of the previous related papers. And some more unrelated ones. While most of the specifics were over my head, I was able to glean enough of the basics to start. The gist of it is that they compare DNA from the skeletal remains of men who died on the Franklin expedition to the DNA of living descendants that specifically come from an unbroken matrilineal or patrilineal line connecting to a common ancestor of the sailor. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) gets passed down the female line, so a sailor and his siblings would have inherited their mother's mtDNA, and his sisters would pass it down to their children, and so on. Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA) gets passed down the male line, so a sailor and his brothers would have inherited their father's Y-DNA, and he and his brothers would pass it down to their sons, and so on.  

My first attempt was with a steward, William Gibson. He interested me specifically because he was one of the stewards thought to be the potential identity of the Gladman Point skeleton, and I thought that, out of everyone who could potentially be identified through DNA, that body was the most interesting one left. One of the papers I had read as background before reaching out listed some of Gibson's immediate family in Australia, so I used that as a starting point. I was able to find a handful of living maternal descendants for Gibson. However, it turned out they already had information on his descendants, so it was all for naught. 

Not to be deterred, I tried again with an AB named William Sinclair, and that time they didn’t already have a DNA profile for him, so he was the first person I actually contacted descendants for – this was November 1st, 2024, only a few weeks after I started doing genealogy. I was a little obsessed; when I start a new hobby, I fixate hard.

Very shortly after that followed another AB, George John Cann, for whom I contacted descendants on November 20th.

John Bridgens, a steward on the Erebus, was the third person I contacted descendants for. On 7 December 2024 I emailed Dr. Stenton the maternal line I found for him. After confirming that they didn’t already have a DNA profile for Bridgens, I reached out to a descendant that evening. 

There were a handful of descendants in the United Kingdom that would qualify, but I was only able to find one online. Unfortunately, the online accounts that I found for her weren’t very active, so after a few months of waiting Dr. Stenton instead tried reaching out through physical mail. The letter was returned due to incorrect postage. He tried again. There was no response. I’m not sure if she even received it; it’s entirely possible we had the wrong address.

So far, in my experience, contacting descendants is usually not a quick thing. It was April of 2025 at this point, months after first identifying the maternal line for Bridgens, and we finally decided to pick a different descendant. I had likely addresses for a brother and sister who’d both qualify, and being cheap and not wanting to spend more on postage, I only sent a letter to the older brother. That was April 28th, 2025.

The brother received the letter, talked about it with his sister, and the sister ended up reaching out on May 16th. She said her son might be interested, a DNA kit was sent out, and then finally, at the beginning of July, almost exactly seven months after first tracing out Bridgens’ maternal descendants, a descendant DNA profile was in the lab.

And then on July 19, 2025, I received an email asking to talk on the phone.

This was different. I’d been talking with Dr. Stenton over email for the last nine months. We’d never spoken on the phone before. If he had a question about something I’d sent him, he’d just ask it over email. But now he wanted to talk on the phone?

I was so excited that I was practically shaking. The only thing I could think of was that there was a match for someone, and he wanted to tell me in a more personal way. I tried to restrain my excitement, though, because I’d also been previously informed that, as a third party, I wouldn’t be told the results of any DNA testing.

Being insatiably curious, I do admit that it was frustrating not knowing, but at the same time it didn’t bother me too much because I completely understood why the results wouldn’t be shared with a random stranger the team had never met. They didn’t know me as anything more than an email address.

So he couldn’t be calling me about DNA results. But what else would he call me about?

As much as I wanted to get on the phone right that minute, I was visiting my family that weekend and had already made plans to go to the farmers market with my mom. I spent the next two hours going back and forth between excitement and trying to talk myself out of it.

He’d just got the descendant DNA for Bridgens. Was it a match? But he wouldn’t tell me if it was a match. We’ve been talking about the Gladman Point body a bit, and Bridgens is a steward, could it be? No, Bridgens had black hair, the "Peglar" body didn’t. But maybe? No. And anyway, he can’t be calling me about Bridgens because I'm a third party, so I don’t hear about the results. But what else would he be calling about now? Maybe one of the earlier people I did was a match and the study’s about to come out and he’s giving me a heads up? But for the timing to be so close to when I know Bridgens was being tested… Okay, calm down, don’t work yourself up, you’ll only be disappointed…

And then, finally back from what seemed like the longest trip to the farmer’s market ever, he called. He told me John Bridgens was a match for one of the two unidentified bodies found in the same location that previously identified John Gregory was. And then he extended an extremely generous offer from the team to have me as a co-author on the paper, which is the reason they were telling me about the DNA result this time. There was a dearth of published material on Bridgens, so there weren't really sources to draw from other than the genealogical material I'd compiled. To be quite honest, this phone call is a bit of a blur. I think I interrupted him a lot in my excitement. Whoops, sorry about that.

Anyway.

I was very excited to finish my portion of the paper, Bridgens’ biography blurb, but by coincidence I actually had a trip to Iceland planned the next week, so with travel prep I didn’t have much time. I then had a glorious ten days in Iceland, where the weather was miraculously lovely, and everything was perfect, and I kept thinking I was going to fall off a cliff while hiking the Fimmvörðuháls trail because my life was going too well.

God, look at this view. There's no way I'm not about to ironically fall off a cliff and die right now. 

I did not fall off a cliff, luckily, but I did catch something and returned home sick as a dog for a couple of weeks, so I wasn’t able to put any focus on the Bridgens biography.

Before I could even get back to it, I got another email from Dr. Stenton on August 15th.

As I said, contacting descendants is usually not a quick thing. So far, every descendant I’ve found has lived in the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand; it can take weeks for the DNA kits to arrive from Canada, and then more weeks to get mailed back. During the time we were in limbo with Bridgens, I'd continued researching other members of the expedition. Descendants of Richard Aylmore, Thomas Jopson, William Orren, Abraham Seely, George Chambers, David Young, and Harry Peglar were contacted between January and July of 2025. Because it can take so long to get in contact with descendants, and longer for the kits to be received, when I'd left for vacation almost all of the DNA kits for the aforementioned were still in transit.

It turns out, one of those kits arrived while I was recovering, and had resulted in a match. The remains of ship’s boy David Young had been identified.

And then, unthinkably, only a couple of days later I got another email. They’d received the DNA kit of a collateral descendant of William Orren, and it was also a match. I'd heard about Young on Friday, August 15th, and Orren by Monday, on August 18th.

I’d been doing this for research for ten months, and now, within one month, there were three matches. The study itself had been going on for several years with only two matches, and now it had more than doubled!

Douglas Stenton formatted the paper for one identification, and then reformatted it for two, and then reformatted it again for three.

But there were still two DNA kits in the mail at that point. It was decided to wait to submit the paper until they came in, on the off chance that we’d win the lottery again and get another match. One of those kits was for a descendant of Richard Aylmore’s sister, which didn’t result in a match. The other was for a descendant of Harry Peglar’s sister.

When we talked on the phone that first time in July about Bridgens, Dr. Stenton also disclosed that he was working on a paper related to Harry Peglar. He’d been looking at trying to identify the Gladman Point skeleton through stature analysis. He told me straight: “I’m pretty sure this guy is just Peglar.”

My number one goal when I started this whole genealogy project was assisting in the identification of the Gladman Point body. I’d been researching stewards with that in mind – while also diverting to ship’s boys and ABs when I needed a break – but I didn’t have much hope. The two stewards who’d been put forward as the most likely identities were William Gibson and Thomas Armitage. As I’ve mentioned before, Gibson was out because they already had descendant DNA for him, and I knew other people were looking into Armitage, so I left him alone. I continued researching stewards in want of identifying the Gladman Point skeleton, but at the same time thought it probably wasn’t that likely.

I started researching Henry Peglar himself pretty quickly as part of that effort, though I did think a steward was more probable. I found a potential line for one of his sisters, Mary Ann, and had identified several living descendants by January of 2025. However, she had a big family. My process is I choose a crew member to look into, research them, hopefully identify descendants, write up a document on my research if I do while double-checking everything, send it to Dr. Stenton, and hear back if I have the go-ahead to start contacting people. With how large Mary Ann Peglar’s maternal line was, I knew it’d be a lot of work to write the whole thing up and double-check everything, and so I reached out to Dr. Stenton to see if they already had descendants for Peglar. It turns out they had a Y-chromosomal DNA profile for him already, so I decided to put him on the back burner for the time being and concentrate on researching other people. 

Then, several months later, in May, I found out that they were specifically hoping for maternal lines for Peglar and all the stewards. As it turns out, they were only able to get a partial Y-chromosomal DNA profile from the Gladman Point remains, which wasn’t enough to make a comparison (or something along that line, I’m not a geneticist).

I went back and finished that maternal line, wrote it up, and sent him my research (34 pages, in the end, but a lot of that is pictures) on July 6th. I was able to get in contact with a descendant shortly after.

So, in mid-July when we talked on the phone for the first time and he told me that he thought the Gladman Point skeleton was Peglar himself, it was while there was a DNA kit for a Peglar descendant actively in transit. Suddenly, wait a second, I had a chance at accomplishing the main goal I had set out to do?!

On September 16th, 2025 – almost exactly a year since the identification of Captain James Fitzjames was made public, which was what had inspired me to embark on this whole crazy journey in the first place – the results for that DNA kit came back. It was a match for the Gladman Point skeleton.

It was a bit of a mixed bag of emotions, because it came only one day after Parks Canada announced they would no longer be doing any archaeological dives on the wrecks of Erebus and Terror. When I heard about the result for Bridgens, I could barely sleep that night. For Peglar, because of the emotional whiplash, it took about a week to sink in and give me a sleepless night.

On top of somehow inexplicably being able to assist in solving a mystery I’d been reading about for a few years, with no real qualifications to my name, which is quite frankly fucking bonkers, this is also the first person to be identified from the Terror. After the first three I’d helped with were from Erebus, I set a minor goal for myself to try to assist in identifying the first man from HMS Terror. I didn’t expect it’d only come a month later!

I hope you’ll excuse this long, self-indulgent post. I have been dying these last nine months, keeping it all in. This is all I’ve wanted to talk about, but I was sworn to secrecy. Now that I can finally talk about it, I’m going to ramble!

To have put my name on a tiny piece of this history is something I never expected, and words cannot express how I feel. This has been the craziest and most significant chapter of my life thus far, and it wouldn’t have happened without a whole lot of people.

First of all, I have to thank Dr. Douglas Stenton for being so kind and patient and generous with his time when a random woman started sending him thirty-page genealogy PDFs out of nowhere. The man has an Order of Canada, and he’s spending some of his time reading emails from me? What a bizarre world we live in.  

Secondly, I’d like to thank the whole team – Douglas Stenton, Stephen Fratpietro, and Robert Park – for so generously extending an offer to me to be a co-author on these papers. They didn’t need to; I would have been thrilled to the moon and back with just an acknowledgement. Being asked to come on as a co-author was something I never expected. It's hard to describe what it means to me. When I was in grade nine, I decided that I wanted to be an archaeologist. I spent the entirety of my time in high school with this in mind; it was my whole plan for the future. I did a year of archeology in university, and long story short, it didn’t work out. I ended up dropping out, and several years later I totally reevaluated my life and went back for a comp sci degree. And I love it, don’t get me wrong, but every once in a while I wonder where I’d be if things were different and I’d stuck with it. To actually have my name on a paper relevant to that field is a really lovely bookend for that part of my life, and I am so grateful they gave me the opportunity. 

And, of course, I need to thank the descendants.

• To the family descended from John Bridgen’s sister, who passed a letter along from brother to sister to son: Receiving an unexpected letter in the mail from a stranger in another country who’s managed to track down both your family history and your physical address is a lot. If any one of you had immediately thrown it in the trash instead, I’d have understood completely, but instead you took a chance and were interested enough to participate. Bridgens was my absolute favourite person to do genealogy research on so far. His family tree was a satisfying and interesting challenge. For him to have been the first match to come from my work is such a rewarding thing, and I’m so thankful. 
• To the man descended from David Young’s brother, and his wife: For everyone else, I traced a full path down from a sailor to living familial descendants. However, since I was unsure if I was researching the right David Young, I reached out to related Ancestry.com users very early on, without having a full family tree, just to see if anyone in the family had heard anything about a relation. You did, and happened to come from the right line, and therefore basically did all the work for me. Thank you so much.
• To the person descended from William Orren’s sister: I’d actually contacted multiple descendants in a paternal line for Orren and none reached out, so I’m extra grateful you were interested and contributed to this study.
• To the person descended from Harry Peglar’s sister: You helped me achieve the unrealistic goal I set out on this whole journey for, so I will forever be grateful.

 And lastly, I’d like to thank Fabiënne Tetteroo. The idea of tracking down Franklin expedition descendants never would have occurred to me at all had she not done it first, and so spectacularly. Also, I’d like to apologize in advance to her. When the Fitzjames results were made public, articles about it kept incorrectly referring to her as a fangirl of the TV show The Terror and not an actual historian. Unfortunately for her, I am just some fangirl of The Terror. So Fabiënne: I’m sorry if people group us together and continue to downplay your qualifications and education.

I didn't give Orren or Young their due here, but I figure I've rambled on long enough. When things have settled down a bit, I'll post some of my extended genealogy research on all four men and their immediate families.

I tell everyone I contact that if there isn't a match, even knowing who isn’t present among the remains is still significant. It’s more information than we had yesterday. I knew even if none of my work resulted in a match, it was still useful. 

But I really wanted a match. When I started doing this, I told myself that I just wanted one. Just one. I knew the chances weren't great, but somehow I got lucky and it happened anyway. I got my one... And then almost immediately afterwards got my second, and then third, and then fourth. 

… But why keep it at four? I’m still having fun, so I’m going to keep going – albeit a bit slower because my obsessive pace at the beginning of last year was unsustainable. Who knows, maybe I’ll be lucky again. Or maybe someone else reading this news will also think “Wait, could I do this?” and they’ll be lucky. Fingers crossed!