I Guess Gertrude Was Done With It

Part of Lilian Walters' headstone was found by her daughters to have been recycled.

The marble base had once been a gravestone to 'Gertrude' with the words, 'dearly loved wife of Albert Birkinshaw died Sep 2 1952 aged 41 years'. [Link]

Gravestone a Perfect Fit

A minister in Aquebogue, New York, received a letter from Washington in 1900 concerning the whereabouts of a tombstone.

The letter, which was sent to the clergyman as an old resident of the part of the country where that tombstone was placed over the body of one of the early inhabitants, a man named Beale. This man died many years ago, on a date which the tombstone alone can tell, of smallpox, and was buried, according to the custom of the time, in the orchard of the farm.

The stone was laid flat upon the grave. When, a good many years after, strangers bought the land, they started to put up a house, and the stone was incorporated in it. There was a place in the chamney into which the tombstone would exactly fit, and the builders, having no sentiment concerning it, used it. That was the end of the second chapter of the tombstone.

The house with the tombstone in the chamney was burned after a time, and the ruins, with the old stone, were left until another family came to put up another house. When this one was finished it lacked a doorstep, and the old stone was again just the size for the purpose required, and was put into place, and performed its third service. But from that time the history is lost, and the Washington people would like to learn something of it. [Link (pdf)]

What Kind of Bait Did He Use?

A man fishing in Indiana's White River caught more than his limit of gravestones.

An Indianapolis man stumbled upon the grave markers when he untangled a snagged fishing line and lifted a 145-year-old gravestone into his bass boat.

"All these headstones, I don't think they have any business of being where I found them," said Jim Hodges, 62. [Link]

A Politician on the Wrong Side of Town

A monument on Loudon Road in Concord, New Hampshire, marks the location where Isaac Hill—a former governor and U.S. senator—lived.

But Hill never lived there. He lived on Main Street, where he ran the New Hampshire Patriot newspaper and courted politicians. For years, the mistake has irked local historians.

"A lot of the evidence of the man is gone," said former city planner Randall Raymond. "What remains is a monument that's worn and in the wrong place. And this was an important man."

The marker sits in front of a Goodwill store, but belongs in front of a CVS pharmacy across the river.

"How a granite monument crossed the Merrimack, I don't know," Raymond said. "I don't think it floats." [Link]

A Caper on the Cape

Volunteers in Sandwich, Massachusetts, waded into a pond last Saturday with "thumping" poles, in search of gravestones supposed missing from the adjacent Old Town Cemetery. George Burbank's 1946 book Highlights of Sandwich History says that ne'er-do-wells tossed the stones into the pond back in the 1880s.

In December, town workers pulled a headstone of Hannah Thacher, who died in 1785, from the water. Town workers found the headstone and other broken pieces of stone in shallow water when they were clearing bramble and brush between the pond and the cemetery.

Some believe Burbank's tale of graveyard shenanigans is accurate because while the burial ground was established in 1663, according to historical records, the oldest stone in the cemetery is marked 1685.

That's a 20-year gap with no explanation. [Link]

There are other possible explanations for the gap. In his study of colonial gravestones on Cape Cod, Stephen P. Broker was able to locate just 37 stones bearing dates prior to 1709.

Possible explanations for the slow start in gravestones being placed in Cape cemeteries include a hesitancy of the early settlers to mark the graves of their growing numbers of deceased for fear of encouraging attack by the Native Americans, the initial absence of a gravestone carving tradition in the New World, the need to import gravestones from Boston and Plymouth carving centers, the use of uninscribed fieldstones to mark early burials, the use of wooden markers that have not survived, and the use of inscribed stones that have disappeared with the ensuing time. [Link]

[Photo credit: Zad Crol by Chris Seufert]

History Swept Under the Rug

Something surprising was found recently under the carpeting of 700-year-old St. Helen's Church in Pinxton, Derbyshire, England.

Churchwarden Stuart Thornley said that the headstones came to light when the carpeting was being replaced.

"It was something of a shock to see them. The carpet had been down for many years and we had no idea that they were there," he said.

"They had obviously been taken from the churchyard and used when the floor was relaid. But we have no idea when the work was done." [Link]

One of the stones mentioned—that of Mary Kelsal—has been there since at least 1891.

A Monumental First Step

Joshua Jones was dismantling his porch step when he found a granite slab underneath.

"I could see the tip of it sticking up, and I said, 'God, I have a headstone in my backyard,'" Jones recalled. "Please don't let me find a grave."

Fearing what he might find, Jones took a hose to the dirt-encrusted chunk -- and let out his breath.

The water revealed a marker chiseled with "United States Military Academy" and "Stewart Field, West Point, N.Y.," and the names of a general and two colonels.

His porch step, it appeared, had historical significance. [Link]

[Thanks, William!]

Where Gravestones Go to Die

Numerous headstones have been found dumped in a field in Porterville, California, but a cemetery district official says there's no need to fret.

“We get people who come in every month, sometimes even police, and they ask about the headstones,” District Assistant Manager Fred Ruiz said. “We tell them that there isn't a controversy, and there isn't an old graveyard.”

What it is, cemetery officials said, is the result of years of discarded headstones from Monument Works, the city's oldest monument business, and other monument companies.

Louis R. Stephen Jr., the owner of the company established in 1899, said the headstones were ones that had mistakes or did not meet the individual family's preference. [Link]

The best part of this story is the full name of the business to blame: Porterville Monument Works and Swimming Pool Supplies.

Child's Gravestone Gets Upgraded

While digging in a Stockton, California, vacant lot, Victor Rosasco turned up the headstone of a boy who died in 1857. He later had the job of repairing a nearby monument to California hero John Brown. Deciding that "the little guy deserves some recognition," he decided to incorporate the boy's stone into the monument.

The reaction of members of Stockton's Cultural Heritage Board - two wide eyes, one crinkled nose and one "Oh, my goodness!" - could have been predicted. They had come to a vacant lot in east downtown Saturday to honor Brown, known as California's Paul Revere, and to rededicate the monument, which fell apart in 2004 or 2005.

No mention of the "Son of Noah & Lucy Aun Burrows ... aged one year" existed, after all, when the marker was erected in 1969. [Link]

A Patriot on the Wrong Side of Town

William Dawes also took a midnight ride on April 18, 1775, but his name didn't rhyme with "Listen my children and you shall hear." Now it appears that the attention given the long-neglected patriot in recent years has been paid in the wrong ZIP code.

It looks like even the few dedicated tourists who've bothered to pay their respects to Dawes have been solemnly standing on the wrong side of town.

Though plaques and published guides place Dawes's remains alongside his relatives in the King's Chapel Burying Ground downtown, veteran tour guide Al Maze recently discovered evidence suggesting that Dawes's final resting place is in fact in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain. [Link]

He's Lost Without a Washtub

Authorities are investigating whether a rural South Carolina graveyard has been "tampered with." According to aerial maps, the cemetery has shrunk considerably in recent years, and a new hill has appeared. The above-ground vault of Harry Austin's mother has disappeared, and the distinctive markers that helped him find the graves of his father, uncle, aunt and grandfather are gone.

Austin said the trees above the graves were sometimes marked with the help of an ax or a saw. A washtub was hung in the tree and a cross placed in the ground to locate the burial site, he said.

"That's how I know where it was at," Austin said. [Link]

Compulsive Grave Robbing

Police in Lincoln, Nebraska, are trying to return these stolen grave markers to their proper locations. They turned up last summer in the storage unit of the late Clarence Horner.

"This guy apparently had some kind of compulsion to steal them and collect them," said Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady.

A couple of years ago, Lincoln police got a call that someone was lurking around an east Lincoln cemetery and it turned out to be Horner, Casady said.

"He had some mental issues. Officers knew when they contacted him but we had no idea he was stealing headstones," Casady said. [Link]

Roving Stones Reunited

From the Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal:

Out-of-place gravestones puzzle police

Last update: December 30, 2005

ORMOND BEACH -- Police have a mystery on their hands in the form of two cemetery headstones.

Bearing the names "John H." and "Pearl L.," the headstones were found Wednesday and Thursday at two separate locations in the city, Sgt. Kenny Hayes said.

[snip]

Police believe the headstones could be sections of another stone because they have adhesive material on the back and because the people named were close in age.

John H. was born in 1880 and died in 1965. Pearl L., meanwhile, was born in 1882 and died in 1964.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Update (Dec. 31, 2005): The stones have been claimed by the couple's great-great-granddaughter.

A Sister's Stony Silence

From the Medford (N.J.) Central Record of Sept. 15, 2005:

Mystery of grave stone solved! (Sort of)

by Nick DiUlio
The Central Record staff

TABERNACLE-A few weeks ago Howard Lincoln uncovered a tombstone buried in his backyard and no one-including township officials-had any idea where it had come from.

[snip]

Because of a story that ran in The Central Record on Aug. 4, Agnes and Francis Edwards were alerted to a problem of which they had not previously been aware.

[snip]

According to the couple -who live just a few blocks from the Lincoln residence - the name on the tombstone belongs to Agnes' late father.

[snip]

Agnes claims her mother entrusted her son-in-law - the husband of one of Agnes' older sisters - with the task of ordering the granite stone and having it delivered to the gravesite. At the time, Agnes' sister and her brother-in-law lived at what is now the Lincoln residence in Tabernacle.

Presumably, the gravestone never made it to its destination and the Edwards are now in the process of trying figure out why. And to make matter more difficult, Agnes' sister has refused to speak to anyone in the family for some time now and her husband has been dead for several years.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Read the original story.

Stones On Tour in the Southern States?

From the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer:

Artisan's headstone laid to rest at last

DAN HUNTLEY

Godfrey Beimgard did what most of us will never do -- carved his own headstone.

The York County artisan, who died Aug. 31, 1839, chiseled these words above his head: "Adieu all both far and near, my loving wife and children. For my immortal soul has fled, I now lie numbered with the dead. Remember friends as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I, As I am now, so you must be. Prepare for death and follow me."

He intended these words to be above his buried crypt for all eternity.

The German native has stayed put for 166 years, but his headstone has been on the move.

Beimgard was buried at Clover's Old Center Cemetery. Ten to 15 years ago, someone stole the 41/2-foot-high tombstone from Clover during vandalism that has destroyed most of the grave markers in the cemetery. In the mid-'90s, the gravestone mysteriously appeared in the Union Grove United Methodist Church cemetery in Sevier County, Tenn. The church -- about 25 miles east of Knoxville -- has no connection to the Beimgard family. Church officials were puzzled by the tombstone because no one was buried there before 1886.

[snip]

"I thought it was a joke at first because I couldn't figure out how in the world a Clover tombstone over 150 years old had ended up in Tennessee," said [Ed] Stewart, who works at M.L. Ford Funeral Home in Clover.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Gravestone Discovered 'Absent from the body'

From The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record:

A tale, but no dead man, unearthed in Englewood

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

By CAROLYN FEIBEL and EVONNE COUTROS
STAFF WRITERS

Workers have accidentally uncovered a solitary gravestone behind the Englewood police station, the toppled monument to a 19th century timber dealer who lived and died before the city was founded.

No human remains or other graves were found near the 4-foot headstone, which lay on its side in a ditch by the railroad tracks, covered in brush and trash.

[snip]

Local historians say the land originally housed a building supply business, the Prentice Co. The gravestone belongs to James H. Prentice, born June 28, 1817, died April 24, 1891. "Absent from the body/Present with the Lord," it reads.

[snip]

"For that time, he lived a long life," said [acting Police Chief John] Banta, standing by the yellow tape that marked off the discovery.

"If we can't locate anybody from the family, we may have to fence off some small area, do something. I'd prefer that to just having it end up in the Dumpster."

[Read the whole story]

g

A House Built on Love . . . And a Few Gravestones

From the Taft (Calif.) Midway Driller of Aug. 31, 2005:

Gravestones turn up in South Taft

By Doug Keeler, Midway Driller Editor

Workers digging to build a foundation under a South Taft home have turned up two grave markers.

[snip]

When the first marker was found a couple of weeks ago under the home on the 400 block of Eastern Avenue, resident Doug Bulkowski called the Kern County Sheriff's Office.

"They were up here in a heartbeat," Bulkowski said. "They thought there might be a murder."

They quickly left after finding out it was only a gravestone.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Murderers generally prefer to leave their victims in unmarked graves.

An Errant Stone Gathers No Slime

From The Barre-Montpelier (Vt.) Times Argus:

Submerged tombstone a recent mystery in Barre

August 27, 2005

By Joshua Larkin Times Argus Staff

BARRE – Eleven-year-old Tory Stoltz plays along the brook that runs behind her Eastern Avenue home regularly. That's why she knows the World War II veteran's gravestone that appeared in the brook this week hadn't been there long.

"I was just looking around in here and I just saw it," Stoltz said while standing next to the brook. "And I haven't seen it here before."

Moreover, Stoltz said there was another reason why she knew the stone was a new addition to the brook: "It wasn't too slimy, it was just wet."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

A Stone-Cold Case in Toledo

From the Toledo (Ohio) Blade of Aug. 24, 2005:

GRAVESTONE FOUND

Police seek clues to marker's home

By CHRISTINA HALL
BLADE STAFF WRITER

It's a case of a missing person.

But all Toledo police have to work with in this caper is a gravestone carved with "Conard Yahn 1876-1898."

"If only it could talk. We could take it home," property room Sgt. Jerry Heer said yesterday as he turned the approximately 80-pound marker over to expose a few grass stains on the bottom.

The modest, unweathered stone was found July 22 in an alley behind 124 West Park St. in North Toledo. The marker - which police believe is made of granite and has a more modern polished face - is being kept in the large-item storage area in the old alarm building on Erie Street downtown.

[snip]

An oddity the marker is. Most items found by police are more practical - safes, bicycles, lawn mowers, license plates, and basketball hoops. Some have serial numbers to help track the owners.

"It's not often property has a person's name on it," Sergeant Heer said.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Update (Aug. 27, 2005): Mystery solved.

Update (Sept. 10, 2005): Marker laid to rest.

CSI: Ohio

From the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal of Aug. 13, 2005:

Gravestone concerns laid to rest

No body at Green site where marker found

By Rick Armon

Beacon Journal staff writer

GREEN - Even though Jan Zehnal died nearly 90 years ago and apparently never lived in the city, he caused quite a stir this month in the upscale Fox Ridge Estates.

[snip]

A worker clearing land for a new home stumbled upon a small, worn sandstone grave marker bearing Mr. Zehnal's name.

[snip]

The only thing they did unearth from a huge, four-foot deep, L-shaped hole was a white leather bootie. The shoe was placed in a brown paper bag and will be shipped to the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for analysis -- just in case, said Sheriff's Capt. Larry Momchilov.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]