By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
and BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writers
BATH — The remains of a man believed to have been a member of Blackbeard’s pirate crew are scheduled to return to Beaufort County next month, but their final resting place has yet to be determined.
The court-recognized heirs of alleged pirate-turned-wealthy-Bath-merchant Edward Salter have failed to convince the vestry at St. Thomas Episcopal Church that their ancestor should be buried with an identifiable marker on church grounds.
Citing questions about the identity of the person whose remains were the subject of its deliberations, the vestry voted to allow the remains to be buried in the church cemetery, provided the marker would not list a name and date of birth.
“This was, in our minds, the very best solution for everyone concerned,” said Father Eric Zubler, rector of the church. “We welcomed those colonial bones back with open arms. That’s just not an issue for us at all.”
Some experts have questioned whether the bones are Salter’s, Zubler said.
Pat Mansfield, a member of Zubler’s church and a history buff, disagreed with the vestry’s decision. Mansfield said much evidence points to the likelihood that the bones are Salter’s, and she highlighted the port village merchant’s involvement in the establishment of the church.
“After all of this documentation and all this person’s contributions, they’re not going to be viewing Edward Salter and his contributions to Bath as a leader from 1720 to 1735 and also his very special relationship to St. Thomas Church,” she said of the vestry.
Now, the heirs say they want the remains to be returned to the spot where they were unearthed — Bath’s Beasley Point, a site owned by PotashCorp, which has a phosphate-mining operation near Aurora.
In addition to its widely recognized colonial-era components, some historians and archaeologists contend Beasley Point is the most likely candidate for the Secotan Indian village painted by English watercolorist John White on a 1585 expedition.
A coalition of county officials, preservationists and others is hoping PotashCorp will allow further archaeological digs at the site.
Salter’s heirs are waiting for permission from PotashCorp to have the remains reinterred at the site.
“We … wanted, in a very specific way, to make the remains available for the benefit of history and science and also to alert the public to preserving these kinds of things with dignity and discretion,” said the Rev. John Stephen Park, of Fort Wayne, Ind., one of the people identifying themselves as Salter’s heirs.
“Even though my strong feelings for him are as a progenitor, I do feel he’s a public figure, and he doesn’t just belong to me, he belongs to the state of North Carolina,” Park said.
The remains are scheduled to return to Beaufort County by Oct. 3. They will be temporarily interred in an undisclosed location while their final resting spot is determined, according to Raleigh researcher Kevin Duffus, whose longtime interest in the history of eastern North Carolina has helped determine the fate of the remains.
Duffus believes that this same Edward Salter, a barrel-maker who died in 1735, may have been a member of Blackbeard’s pirate crew who escaped the noose and returned to settle in Bath. Salter went on to become a warden of St. Thomas Parish and an assemblyman representing Beaufort County in 1731.
Salter once owned a plantation along Beasley Point, where the remains were unearthed in 1986 as part of a state-led archaeological investigation that preceded the bulkheading of the property.
The bones of the man Duffus believes to be Salter ended up in Raleigh after what was then TexasGulf asked for permission to install the bulkhead on the west bank of Bath Creek.
The remains have been sent to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History for evaluation after a ruling earlier this year by Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons ordered the state to search for Salter’s heirs and turn the remains over to those heirs.
Paul Funeral Home of Washington, which delivered the bones to the Smithsonian, has volunteered to help with their disposition, a company official said Tuesday.
Despite the lack of genetic evidence, Duffus and others are convinced that the remains are those of Salter.
“There will never be any DNA test that will tell us the name of this person,” he said. “We would have to have the DNA of Edward Salter’s mother, for example, to compare to these remains to say conclusively that these remains were Edward Salter or a brother of Edward Salter.”
Duffus said the evidence that the remains were Salter’s was sufficient to convince Sermons to order the state to turn those remains over to the next of kin.
“You would have to say that the identification wasn’t in question to do such a thing,” he said.
The forensic analysis of the remains at the Smithsonian has narrowed the potential place of birth of the individual to the upper Mid-Atlantic area — most likely the New Jersey region — which was the home of several members of the Salter family in the 17th century, Duffus related.
The Smithsonian tests also indicate that the individual may very likely have been a barrel-maker, strengthening findings by state archeologists in 1986, Duffus said.
The family will allow a small portion of bone to be retained and archived by the Smithsonian so that, in the future, when technology develops further, there may be genetic tests that can definitively link the remains to living descendants, Duffus said.
Efforts to contact the Smithsonian were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the identity of the remains of a black woman, uncovered along with those believed to be Salter, are still a mystery. The state did not receive a response to its advertisements asking for heirs to come forward and. as a result, those remains will continue to be housed in Raleigh.
Tom Thompson, Beaufort County’s economic developer, is among the local officials advocating for the return of the remains to the county.
“All I can say is he is a very prominent part of North Carolina history,” Thompson said, referring to Salter. “I think we need to do something suitable and appropriate.”