His Body Was Mummified, Exhumed And Reburied

The fact that John Paul Jones' remains were reburied is one of the interesting facts about him. Jones kept on going on excursions after he passed away. Before being buried in 1792, Pierrot Francois Simonneau made a donation of nearly 460 francs to have his body mummified. In order for his bones to be more easily identified "in the event that the United States wanted to claim his remains," he requested that they be preserved in alcohol and interred in a lead coffin.

Indeed, Jones's bones were located in 1905 after General Horace Porter, the ambassador to France, discovered he was searching for a lead casket. His last resting place, Saint Louis Cemetery, had once belonged to the French royal family but had been abandoned and neglected following the French Revolution. After discovering the cemetery's historic location, Porter utilized sounding probes to hunt for any lead coffins. The third of five coffins turned out to contain John Paul Jones' remains.

An interesting fact about John Paul Jones is that after being buried in England, his body was later brought to the US. His coffin was then installed at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where a ceremony was held before it was reburied in a bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel.