I think I have remarked upon this issue before...
That if you once start exhuming persons of note so that their (alleged) descendants can get a DNA test done, there will be no end to it, I think we can be pretty sure, no?
Anyway, I recently came across this, where somebody who is, it appears, already actually acknowledged to be the descendant of Warren G Harding's adulterous rumpy-pumpy* in the White House, is still asking for this: Warren Harding: Grandson of former US president asks to exhume his remains. James Blaesing told a court he wants to establish his ancestry with "scientific certainty". But other members of Harding's family have opposed the request, filed in May. They say they have accepted DNA evidence that Mr Blaesing's mother, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was the daughter of Harding and Nan Britton.
Harding, the 29th president of the US, had an extramarital affair with Britton before and during his presidency, between 1921 and 1923. The affair only came to light after Harding died of a heart attack while still in office in 1923. Britton revealed their relationship in a 1927 book, The President's Daughter, but never sought DNA evidence confirming Harding's paternity of the child. Harding had no other children.
I was going to say that she could hardly have sought DNA evidence in 1927, but see that she survived to 1991 (the words 'tough old broad' spring to mind).
Apparently the Harding Memorial is intending including a section on Britton and her daughter (and perhaps a reconstruction of the notorious coat-closet?) and say they accept the existing DNA evidence concerning Mrs Blaesing, so we don't quite see why her son wishes to disturb Harding's corpse. Case seems already proven (matrilineal descent being after all, uncontentious).
*Is this, like 'bonk', a word no longer known among the youngs?
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