FACES Lab at LSU: A Civil War Mystery

April 2012. Faces from the Past: Mary Manhein and her staff create images of unknown soldiers who died 150 years ago.

Mary Manhein, aka the Bone Lady, typically applies her skills to helping identify victims of crime. As director of the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) laboratory at LSU, she primarily works with law-enforcement agencies.

“Mainly, our job deals with forensic anthropology,” says Manhein. “We help law-enforcement agencies all across the state, and the country, identify people. Occasionally, we get to work on research projects.”

Most recently, Manhein and her colleagues worked to solve a 150-year-old puzzle. Their task: recreating the faces of two Civil War soldiers—sailors, actually—who died in 1862.

Manhein unveiled her work at the US Navy Memorial in Washington, DC, last month at the observation of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia. In that battle on March 9, 1862, the ironclad warship USS Monitor fought the Confederate ship CSS Virginia (better known as the Merrimac) to a draw. Months later, on December 31, 1862, the Monitor sank while being towed through rough seas off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. There were sixty-two crewmen aboard, sixteen of whom were either lost in the ocean or trapped inside the ship.

More than a century later, in 1973, a search team from Duke University discovered the Monitor during a systematic sonar sweep of the Atlantic floor near the ship’s last sighting. Over the next four decades the Monitor, 240 feet under water, was partially excavated.

In 2002, the ship’s gun turret was raised from the ocean floor by divers from the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The skeletal remains of two sailors were discovered inside. No trace has been found of the other fourteen missing crew members.

Most of the ironclad is still at the bottom of the ocean. “They’ll probably never raise the ship,” says Manhein, sitting behind a cluttered desk in her small office at LSU. “It’s iron, and it’s heavy.”

She turns to her computer monitor and clicks on photos of the excavation process. The human remains were covered in more than a century’s worth of silt, making them difficult to extract. “They were removed from a very hard matrix with the consistency of concrete,” says Manhein.

She clicks through photos of objects found with the skeletons: a shoe, a boot, a uniform button, a ring, a knife, a pocket comb, and silverware—two forks and two spoons.

The skeletal remains were turned over to the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii, which began working to identify the sailors. JPAC is a task force within the Department of Defense whose mission is to account for Americans listed as Prisoners of War (POW) or Missing in Action (MIA) from all past wars and conflicts.

Manhein and her team became involved in the project through Texas A&M anthropology professor Wayne Smith, who specializes in nautical research. “He visited the FACES lab and was very impressed with our work,” says Manhein. “He told me about the project and said that they were looking for someone to create three-dimensional clay images of the soldiers. I told him we’d love to be part of it.”

JPAC sent Manhein casts of the men's skulls and of their hipbones, which can help determine gender and age. Manhein estimates one man was about twenty years old and the other was about thirty.

Both skeletons were well-preserved and nearly complete. Manhein says the younger sailor was about five feet, seven inches tall, with relatively good oral hygiene. “He had all of his teeth, and they were in good shape, with no sign of cavities,” she says. The other man was about an inch shorter, and he probably smoked a pipe. “A pipe wears down the enamel of the teeth,” says Manhein. “There were grooves or notches in the biting edges of his upper and lower teeth, an area of wear on the left side.”

Imaging specialist Eileen Barrow created facial reconstructions by using a combination of three-dimensional clay facial reconstruction, computer-generated modeling, and computer-enhanced imaging techniques.

According to Manhein, Barrow created the facial features by placing dozens of markers on the skull models to mark the depth of skin tissue. Using skull measurements, she determined how wide each nose was and how full the lips were. After creating clay faces from the measurements, Barrow gave the men hairstyles appropriate to the time period. The sculpted heads were then photographed, scanned into a computer, and digitally enhanced to make the faces look more lifelike. Manhein says the eyes are always colored brown, since that color tends to be more common; it also photographs well when images are made of the sculpted pieces.

Manhein says it’s always a thrill to see the results of the labor. “It makes them real. Without the face, they are just skulls. It makes them more lifelike, gives us an image we can relate to as human.”

The FACES lab worked on the three-dimensional models for two years, sandwiching the work between other projects. Then, last January, the process went into overdrive. “They asked us to have them ready [in time for the March 6 ceremony in Washington],” says Manhein. “Eileen worked around the clock to do this.”

Manhein says the original deadline had been this summer. “We thought we’d have until June or July. Then they called and said, ‘Could you do it for the anniversary [of the battle]?’ which gave us about six weeks. The call was unexpected. We had to drop several other projects. We also teach and do research. We had to get UPS down here to do a trial run. Plus, I had pneumonia during that time.”

Getting the models to Washington was an ordeal in itself. United Parcel Service constructed custom shock-proof boxes for the heads, drove them to Lafayette, and loaded them onto a UPS plane to Washington. “They had a hundred people working on this,” says Manhein. “They made crates and hand carried them to Lafayette and got on the plane with them. They said they were the most fragile things they’ve ever handled.”

At the ceremony in Washington, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries released the forensic reconstructions of the faces of the two crew members. They were displayed along with “photographs” of the two men. Manhein and research associate Nicole Harris attended the ceremony.

“I gave a presentation about our work,” says Manhein. “I talked briefly about who we are and what we do. Before the presentation, there was a media Q&A, and I was interviewed by several news agencies. I think we’re one of the best kept secrets in the country.”

During the ceremony, a plaque was dedicated at the US Navy Memorial in memory of the Monitor crew. The sculptures will be kept as part of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries’ Monitor collection and will be used in future exhibits and educational programs.

According to David Alberg, superintendent of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, releasing images of the reconstructed faces might lead to public assistance in identifying the sailors. “These are the faces of men who gave their lives for their country at a pivotal moment in American history,” he said at the Washington ceremony. “The best-case scenario is that someone will emerge, perhaps a descendent, who can give these faces a name.” (If the remains cannot be identified, they will be buried at Arlington Cemetery as unknown soldiers.)

A list of the ship’s crew, as well as photographs of the men, gave genealogist Lisa Stansbury of Alexandria, Virginia, something to work with. She pored over pension records and other documents in an effort to identify the two sailors in the Monitor’s turret. Although she couldn't make a positive match, she stated that she believes the older sailor to be the ship's fireman Robert Williams, a native of Wales. She theorizes that the other sailor could be Samuel A. Lewis, a young officer who was born in Pennsylvania and living in Baltimore when he joined the Navy.

Meanwhile Manhein, the FACES lab, and LSU are in the spotlight. "It's in all the history books," Manhein says. "All of us have grown up hearing about the Monitor and the Merrimac, and now we have the opportunity to ID these men and send them home.

“This was a wonderful opportunity to help solve a 150-year-old forensics case.”

Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.