You Mean He Wasn't a Hunchbacked Woman?

More news on the search for Friedrich Schiller's earthly remains. Neither of the skulls thought to belong to the poet was his, and the two accompanying skeletons were found to "contain bones from at least six people."

Five members of the Schiller family were exhumed in the process to provide the DNA samples for comparison. They found no matching DNA among either of the poet's supposed bodies.

They determined that the skull found by von Froriep was far off the mark. Instead of Schiller, a large man, it actually belonged to a hunchbacked woman, who through analysis of the bones and historical records they later showed was a lady of the court whom Schiller was known to have disliked while alive. The jawbone belonged to another woman entirely.

The other skull was so similar to Schiller's death mask that it confounded even contemporary anthropologists, leading one to say that it belonged to Schiller's "Doppelgänger." The fact that this close match had seven strange teeth inserted post-mortem has led one of the experts who worked on the documentary to the conclusion that it was fixed to look like Schiller's skull and that the real one was stolen. [Link]

One Skull Too Many

Anthropologists have exhumed three relatives of German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller in hopes of positively identifying which of two skulls is his.

The mystery surrounding the skulls began in 1826, 21 years after Schiller died in Weimar, when the local mayor had 23 skulls retrieved from a mass grave in which the poet was buried. Many eminent people at that time were buried in mass graves.

The mayor identified the largest skull as Schiller's and it was brought to the home of his contemporary Goethe, who wrote a poem about it, according to German scholar Albrecht Schoene.

In 1911, another skull was disinterred from the mass grave which researchers claimed was the real one. [Link]

'Missed His Mistress' Myth Dismissed

A grave in Hornsey, England, is said to contain the remains of Harriet Long and her servant Jacob Walker.

A folk tale tells that after Harriet's death in 1841 "an old black servant she brought with her from Virginia was found dead on her grave a day or two after her funeral, so the grave was opened that he might be buried with his mistress".

But an English Heritage report dismisses the old myth about Jacob's romantic passing saying his death certificate records he died of smallpox after vaccination. [Link]

There Was No Body There

Last weekend, archaeologists finally started digging for missing duelist Charles Henry Dickinson in Jim and Laura Bowen's front yard.

“The day we moved in, the guys across the street came in and said, ‘Have you heard about the body? Are you going to help excavate it?’” said Mr. Bowen, as he watched with his daughter, Lily, in his arms.

Several hours of digging turned up nothing.

The archaeologist leading the dig, Larry McKee, his jeans streaked with mud, announced to onlookers and his tired crew, “I think we’re going to call it, guys.”

The Bowens looked out from the porch as workers replaced the sod, saying they might continue after more research.

“We should let them dig up the whole yard,” Ms. Bowen said, “just to settle it once and for all.” [Link]

Grieving Through Glass

Florence Irene Ford died in 1871 at age ten, and was buried in Natchez City Cemetery in Mississippi.

During her short life she was extremely frightened of storms and whenever one occurred she would rush to her mother to find comfort.

Upon her death her mother was so struck with grief that she had Florence's casket constructed with a glass window at the child's head. The grave was dug to provide an area, the same depth of the coffin, at the child's head, but this area had steps that would allow the mother to descend to her daughter's level so she could comfort Florence during storms. To shelter the mother during storms, hinged metal trap doors were installed over the area the mother would occupy while at her child's grave.

The glass window was walled off in the 1950s to prevent vandalism, but the metal doors still work. More photos here, here, and here.

A Meticulous Grave Robber

The body of Sarah Symonds was dug up in Hillsborough, N. H., sometime around Halloween.

Someone dug up her coffin and her remains, leaving behind only a few shards of wood, a meticulously dug hole -- and a mystery for the local police.

"It was dug in a very strange manner. It's perfect," said Hillsborough Police Chief Brian Brown. "You'd have to see it. The sides are all squared. The bottom's level."

"We just don't have any answers right now," he said.

Gilman Shattuck, 80, a resident who is active in the local historical society, said he had researched Symonds since the incident had hit the news and learned she was born on March 29, 1794. Her headstone listed June 18, 1824 as her date of death. She was never married. [Link]

Grass Grows Greener Over Graves

Here's a foolproof way to make yours the lushest lawn in the neighborhood.

Most of the grass in the cemetery at Low’s Lutheran Church has been burned to a pale brown.

But there are spots where the grass is growing green and long, and the Rev. David Mielke said those spots reveal the location of unmarked graves.

Mielke said the church believes it has discovered the location of about 100 old graves as the result of the drought that is afflicting North Carolina. [Link]

She Wants to Be Alone

On a trip to Sweden, Alan W. Petrucelli learned that Greta Garbo is reclusive even in death.

When I get to my hotel, I ask the clerk: How do I get to Garbo's grave? She makes some calls . . . "after all," she tells me in near-perfect English, "that was a long, long time ago. Most people don't remember her anymore."

I learn Garbo is buried at Skogskyrkogarden, a huge cemetery outside town.

I walk back into the crematorium, round a corner and bam! walk right into a female employee. She is far less startled than I am. I ask how to get to Garbo's grave. "Garbo! You're here to see Garbo?" Her tone is incredulous. "No one comes to see Garbo."

Finding Garbo's grave is easy, she insists. "Walk to that parked car. Turn there, turn here, walk there, go here." She punctuates the air with her finger. "You cannot miss it."

I miss it. [Link]

A Tomb With a View

When Timothy Clark Smith was buried in New Haven, Vermont, he had an exit strategy.

Beneath the odd, grassy mound of earth, Timothy's face was positioned beneath a cement tube that led to the surface. The 6 foot tube ended at a piece of 14x14 inch plate glass allowing Tim to gaze upward in the event that he was buried alive. A bell was placed in his hand just in case he needed to signal that he was still alive. Which brings forth the questions...who could hear a bell under 6 feet of earth anyway? If he were alive, how long would the oxygen last if and when someone came to his rescue?

[via Boing Boing]

Grave Used to Trap Tourists

Steven Sederwall is no longer fighting to exhume "Brushy Bill" Roberts to see if he was Billy the Kid. He can't be certain where to dig.

Sederwall said he suspects Roberts' actual grave is at the back of the cemetery and the one up front is "a tourist trap for them to sell their wares," referring to the Billy the Kid Museum in Hamilton. The back of the headstone, which is visible from the highway, contains a clear plastic cylinder full of museum fliers.

"I find it hard to believe that a pauper would get a front and center next to the highway gravesite," said Sederwall, who is investigating Bonney's jailhouse escape and the murder of two deputies during a courthouse shootout in 1881. [Link]

Poe Toaster a Hoax?

Each year on Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, a mysterious figure dressed in black lays roses and booze on his grave in Baltimore. Sam Porpora, 92, a former ad executive, is claiming that he created the legend.

Mr. Porpora's story begins in the late 1960s. He'd just been made historian of the church, built in 1852 at Fayette and Greene Streets. There were fewer than 60 congregants and Mr. Porpora, in his 60s, was one of the youngest. The overgrown cemetery was a favourite of drunken derelicts.

The site needed money and publicity, Mr. Porpora recalled. That, he said, is when the idea of the Poe toaster came to him. The story, as Mr. Porpora told it to a local reporter then, was that the tribute had been laid at the grave on Poe's Jan. 19 birthday every year since 1949. Three roses - one for Poe, one for his wife and one for his mother-in-law - and a bottle of cognac were placed there, because Poe loved the stuff even though he couldn't afford to drink it unless someone else was buying. [Link]

Critics say that Porpora may have popularized the legend, but that the mysterious stranger was showing up long before he became involved.

Salford's Sioux

Excavations for a new BBC building in Salford, England, may turn up the burial site of a Sioux warrior.

The 120-year-old mystery of the whereabouts of the final resting place of the 6ft 7ins brave known as `Surrounded by the Enemy' may lie under Salford Quays. The horseman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Warriors of South Dakota, died during a visit to Salford with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1887/8.

Local councillor Steve Coen says there may be living proof of Native American presence in Salford.

"It is very possible that there may be descendants as they were here for a long time and they were certainly very friendly with the local population."

One Sioux baby was born in Salford and was baptised in St Clement's Church before slipping out of the history books. [Link]

Perhaps They Met in Passing

Royal Canadian Air Force Sgt. R.G. Smith is buried far from home, but his grave is tended by Nita Knapp of Grantham, England.

"I feel a very close connection with Smith, although I never knew him in real life," Knapp said in a telephone interview. "Perhaps it's because he died on the day I was born - Aug. 2, 1941."

Knapp said she regularly places flowers at Smith's gravesite, located near her home. [Link]

Pat Welsh Chandler, a friend of Knapp's from Indiana, is trying to track down relatives of the young pilot—a search hampered by the common surname.

The Great Father Was Not Decapitated

Anne Heyward remembers visiting the grave of her ancestor Thomas Heyward, Jr.—a signer of the Declaration of Independence—when she was a young girl.

Her first memory of visiting Heyward's graveside was in 1941. "My sister and I were very impressed," said Anne, 71. "We decided to call him 'The Great Father.' That night after we got home, our parents realized we thought the (bust) was his real head and they had buried the rest of him -- all except his real head. We had never seen a statue before." [Link]

Boneyard Bunk Beds

An impending shortage of burial space in England and Wales may lead to grave-sharing.

In a technique called "lift and deepen" old graves will be deepened with room for up to six new coffins to be placed on top of the older remains.

Families could refuse permission for their ancestors' graves to be re-used for "at least another generation".

But once the deeper graves have been used once there will be no time constraints on when subsequent bodies are buried in them. [Link]

They Sent for Somebody, They Got Some Body

A mysterious "Doctor Windship" who turned up in Exeter, N. H., in 1802 has been identified as Dr. Amos Windship—a Boston-area surgeon during the Revolutionary War.

Respected by the Americans, he was also admired by the British when, in 1791, he arranged to have the remains of one Major John Pitcairn returned to England for internment in the family plot. Pitcairn had fallen during the Battle of Breed's Hill and died shortly thereafter. His grateful family believed that Windship had done them a gracious favor.

But there are a number of gaping holes in the story of this respectable war veteran. In Boston's Old North Church lies [the] crypt of Major John Pitcairn — it seems that Amos Windship had failed to send the correct body and Bostonians still believe Pitcairn resides in the basement. [Link]

She'd Know That Skull Anywhere

Genealogist Joyce Saunders had the chance to meet her great-grandfather, Civil War soldier Roland Gillispie, when his remains were moved to make way for a highway in West Virginia.

She noticed Gillispie’s skull was relatively small compared to that of an average man. She knew it was his based on prior research into his medical record.

“He had the head of maybe a 12- or 14-year-old boy,” Saunders said. “He was only 5’5”, had a fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair.” [Link]

He Knew How to Write a Good Curse

The curse that William Shakespeare had engraved on his tomb ("Good frend for Jesus sake forebeare,/ To digg the dust encloased heare./ Bleste be y^e man y^t spares thes stones,/ And curst be he y^t moves my bones.") actually worked.

Philip Schwyzer, a senior lecturer at Exeter University, said: "Shakespeare had an unusual obsession with burial and a fear of exhumation. The stern inscription on the slab has been at least partially responsible for the fact that there have been no successful projects to open the grave."

Anxiety about the mistreatment or exhumation of corpses is found in at least 16 of his 37 plays, with this concern often being more pronounced than the fear of death itself. [Link]

[Photo credit: Shakespeare's cursed grave by James Macdonald]

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

A team of filmmakers that includes Titanic director James Cameron will present evidence on Monday that Jesus' burial site has been found.

The story starts in 1980 in Jerusalem’s Talpiyot neighborhood, with the discovery of a 2,000 year old cave containing ten coffins. Six of the ten coffins were carved with inscriptions reading the names: Jesua son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Matthew, Jofa (Joseph, identified as Jesus’ brother), Judah son of Jesua (Jesus’ son - the filmmakers claim).

Although the cave was discovered nearly 30 years ago and the casket inscriptions decoded ten years ago, the filmmakers are the first to establish that the cave was in fact the burial site of Jesus and his family. [Link]

A film about the discovery will be broadcast on the international Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada’s Vision and Israel's Channel 8. I hope the film is better than the website.

The Sitting Bull Memorial Snack Bar

Sitting Bull's descendants want his remains removed from South Dakota to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana because they object to the "improvements" planned for his burial place.

The catalyst for the great-grandchildren's decision apparently was a proposal by the nonprofit Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, which recently purchased the grave site from a private owner. According to its Web site, the foundation's plans include preservation and protection of the grave site and development of an educational and cultural center and museum. It would also include riverfront recreational development, an amphitheater, snack bar, restaurant and gift shop. [Link]