04/25/2026
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For over a century following his death in 1792 at age 45, the remains of America’s greatest Revolutionary War naval war hero lay in a forgotten unmarked grave outside of Paris.
John Paul Jones was living in Paris when he died. Anticipating that the U.S. would want to transport his body back to America for burial, French authorities placed Jones’s remains inside a lead coffin filled with alcohol as a preservative. But to their surprise, American ambassador Gouverneur Morris, who deeply disliked Jones, not only refused to take control of the body, but also refused to pay for his burial, declaring later that “I had no right to spend money on such follies.”
So, the local French precinct commissioner paid for the coffin and covered the expenses of the interment, and the French Legislative Assembly honored the admiral with a full military es**rt and funeral procession as his body was carried from Paris to the Protestant St. Louis Cemetery outside of the city. There John Paul Jones’s remains were laid to rest and, in time, forgotten.
Over a century later, in 1899, the U.S. ambassador to France Horace Porter, a former Civil War brigadier general and Medal of Honor recipient, became determined to find and properly honor Jones’s remains. “I felt a deep sense of humiliation as an American citizen,” Porter later wrote, “in realizing that our first and most fascinating naval hero had been lying for more than a century in an unknown and forgotten grave and that no serious attempt had ever been made to recover his remains and give them appropriate sepulture in the land upon whose history he had shed so much luster. Knowing that he had been buried in Paris, I resolved to undertake personally a systematic and exhaustive search for the body.”
The task Porter undertook was not an easy one. Using old maps he was able to locate the site of the cemetery, only to discover that it had been abandoned, re-graded, and covered with buildings decades earlier. Undeterred, Porter began negotiating with the various owners of the property for permission to proceed with excavation and tunneling on the site, a frustrating process that took years to complete. Finally, in 1905 he received the necessary authorization to begin excavation. By then President Theodore Roosevelt had become interested in the project and he requested that Congress fund it. When Congress balked at the expense, Ambassador Porter advanced the funds personally and proceeded.
Five shafts were dug into the site and over the next 8 weeks many skeletons were unearthed, along with two lead coffins, both of which were proven not to be Jones’s. Finally, on March 31, the researchers discovered a lead coffin that was typical of the kind used in France at the time of Jones’s death. The coffin was opened and found to contain the body of a 5’7” man, which was Jones’s height. The remains were then sent to the Paris School of Medicine for a detailed analysis by French and American experts.
After six days of carefully examining the well-preserved body and clothing, the team issued their conclusion: “The body examined is that of Admiral John Paul Jones.”
When he learned of the finding, President Roosevelt dispatched a squadron of four cruisers to bring Jones home. The remains were placed inside a new lead coffin, draped with an American flag, and were es**rted by French and American military to the port of Cherbourg, where they were taken aboard the USS Brooklyn. When the squadron arrived at the Chesapeake Bay they were joined by seven battleships for the final leg of the journey—to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
At a ceremony attended by President Roosevelt, Ambassador Porter, and numerous other dignitaries, John Paul Jones was formally reinterred at the Naval Academy on April 24, 1906, one hundred twenty years ago today. In January 1913, his remains were placed inside a marble sarcophagus in an impressive crypt beneath the Naval Academy chapel.
