Six years ago, Georgia Southern University archeology student Lisa Powell and a team of researchers caused waves when they discovered that the man known as the father of American cavalry, Gen. Casmir Pulaski, was likely intersex.
U.S. researchers estimate that approximately 1.7% of the population have intersex traits, meaning they are born with a range of characteristics that may not fit traditional conceptions about male or female anatomy. The Georgia Southern findings suggest that Pulaski, a man praised by his contemporaries as a brave and masterful military tactician, had a genetic disorder impacting his hormones and anatomy, something that would have made the American Revolutionary hero a historical marvel.
Since then, Pulaski’s memorial in Savannah’s downtown Monterey Square, where his body is interred, has become the focal point for debates about interpreting American history.
While Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Powell hopes her scholarship will help people appreciate the diversity of America’s past.
“He lived and thrived in a man’s world in a war situation to become the father of American Cavalry,” she said about Pulaski. “I mean, how much more heroic does it get than that?”
‘He lived and thrived in a man’s world’
Born in 1745 in Warsaw, Poland, Pulaski was involved in a revolt against the Polish king before fleeing to Paris, where Benjamin Franklin provided a letter of recommendation for him to fight in the American Revolution.
In George Washington’s army, Pulaski proved his worth in multiple battles and earned promotion to brigadier general.
Yet the general was fatally injured in the Siege of Savannah, a failed attempt at the end of the Revolutionary War to recover Savannah’s port from British control. Records show Pulaski died on Oct. 11, 1779 — but that’s where his story gets complicated.
While some historic accounts described the general as being buried at sea while sailing to Charleston, other records state he was buried at Greenwich Plantation in Savannah. Savannah leaders erected a monument to the hero of the American Revolution in 1854 and moved the bones at the plantation there; that version is accepted by the U.S. National Parks Service.
Identifying Pulaski’s remains
In 1996, the Savannah Parks and Tree Commission started repairs on the Pulaski monument. At the same time, the department reached out to Chatham County’s then-coroner, James Metts, to examine and identify the remains interred there.
Historian Chuck Powell — Lisa Powell’s father — worked for Metts at the time and was recruited to be the administrator of the identification efforts.
The mystery attracted a team of credentialed archeologists and forensic scientists, as well as Polish-American historian Edward Pinkowski, who financed travel to Poland to try and procure the remains of a Pulaski descendant for testing.
From the start, the researchers had a complicated project ahead of them.
Records, including a letter from the ship’s captain who was alleged to have been transporting the injured Pulaski to Charleston, suggested the cavalry general had been buried in a wooden coffin at Greenwich Plantation. Elizabeth Bowen, the young daughter of the plantation owners at the time of Pulaski’s death, was recorded as taking care of the grave.
In the early 1850s, Savannah decided to build a memorial for Pulaski. The bones at the plantation were exhumed, and for a time were temporarily held at what was then known as the Savannah Medical Society (now the Georgia Medical Society), according to Chuck Powell. From there, the bones were placed in a metal container and interred under the monument, which was completed in 1854.
By the time the bones were excavated in the 1990s, the remains were significantly degraded, Chuck Powell recalled.
“They had sat in rainwater for a number of years,” he said. “We don’t know how long. At the time we obtained them in the metal container, the bottom had rusted out. So the water was not in there, but the remains were in pretty bad shape.”
As the researchers examined the bones, it was clear that the remains had trauma matching Pulaski’s documented injuries. It was also clear that the pelvis was anatomically female. The team concluded that the body exhibited a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), one of the more common intersex conditions. In Pulaski’s case, Lisa Powell said CAH manifested in ambiguous genitalia and internal female organs that, because of Pulaski’s testosterone levels, likely never functioned.
The findings divided Chuck Powell’s initial team, with some members immediately dismissing the possibility the remains could be Pulaski.
While the team was confident of the intersex findings, they couldn’t positively identify the remains as Pulaski’s. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, DNA technology was not advanced enough for scientific certainty, at least when the remains being tested were so degraded.
Chuck Powell planned to turn the remains and the research over to the Georgia Historical Society, with the findings incomplete.
The decision upset Lisa Powell, who remembers thinking that a groundbreaking historical mystery might remain unsolved.
“When he said that, I got teary-eyed. I mean, I really almost started crying,” she said. “Because in my mind, what I was picturing was the Ark of the Covenant being wheeled into the warehouse and never being seen again.”
Lisa Powell decided to continue the research with a new team and her father acting as an advisor. The Smithsonian Institute financed new DNA testing and made a documentary about the project.
Her new team took new DNA samples from the remains and sought a genetic match from the remains of a Pulaski descendant, as Pulaski himself had no children.
She said the genetic tests were conducted four times. The results showed a 99.98% match that the intersex body under the Monterey Square was Pulaski.
An ever-important legacy
The Powells’ scholarship hasn’t changed how Pulaski is revered across the nation.
The Polish-born general is honored across the country; in 2025, President Donald Trump even declared October 11 as General Pulaski Memorial Day.
The researchers themselves say that there should be no doubt about Pulaski’s gender identity, either.
“He was raised as a male, he acted as a male, he was a male,” Chuck Powell said.
Yet six years after the findings were published, Savannah tour guides provide visitors and locals a mixed view of who the general was — and whether Savannah can lay claim to his remains.
Brandon Carter, a former National Parks Ranger and the owner of Savannah True History Tours, is a staunch disbeliever that the remains are Pulaski’s. He cites the historic accounts claiming Pulaski died aboard the ship to Charleston and tells visitors that the general was buried between the Savannah River and St. Helena Island.
Carter also doesn’t believe the genetic test results of the remains due to a lack of documentation from other military personnel and the fact that the laboratory where Powell sent the tests was in Canada.
He said he is happy to debate visitors and other guides who disagree with his views, but he’s sticking to his stance.
“I want to believe that Casimir Pulaski is buried in my favorite square, which is Monterey, [but] I think that we often give a little leeway to emotion when it comes to things like this,” he said.
Chuck Powell recognizes the competing accounts of Pulaski’s burial, but he said his daughter’s scholarship should be the last word.
“I don’t know what else we can do with that,” he said about the conflicting assertions. “I just know that the DNA trumps everything, and scientifically, we know this is Pulaski now.”
Lisa Powell echoed a similar sentiment, saying that while the research was and still is extremely controversial, the proof is there even if it means history appears to have changed.
For other Savannah tour guides, Powell’s findings are inspirational. In Sargon Demmin’s “Rising Voices” tour about Savannah’s underrepresented history, Demmin makes sure to spotlight the research.
Demmin said the best way to address the debates around Pulaski’s gender and burial is to acknowledge the complications instead of pretending to know everything about the past. Even when they’re giving different tours that pass Monterey Square, Demmin references the findings whenever possible because they believe it’s important for everyone to know that intersex is not a new phenomenon, and that every type of person held importance in America’s vibrant history.
Some people on Demmin’s tour don’t know what intersex is. Others, Demmin said, are familiar with the research and deeply concerned about the erasure of LGBTQ+ history across the nation.
President Trump has been pushing a strict gender binary: On the first day of his second term, he passed an executive order stating the United States recognizes two sexes, male and female, and federal agencies must remove messaging promoting gender identity apart from biological sex.
“If Pulaski was here right now, right in front of me, I would be ashamed of our country for him right now, and how transgender people and intersex people are being treated,” Lisa Powell said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.