Part of what makes genealogy interesting are the heirlooms, photographs, and other artifacts that connect us to the ancestors who came before us. Gravestones can also bring connections. Sometimes, these important pieces become lost. It is fascinating when, years later, they are found and returned.
Last year, I wrote about a story I’d read about in a newspaper. The gravestone of an infant had somehow become lost from the old cemetery that the baby was buried in. This story happened in Georgia, and had a happy ending. Someone found the gravestone and posted the information about it online. Eventually, the gravestone was reunited with the grave it was intended to sit on. To me, this story seemed like a one-in-a-million.
Today, I read another story of a lost gravestone. Someone was selling the tombstone of an infant named Lena, who died in 1880. It was for sale on eBay. The information on the stone noted that Lena was eight months and five days old when she died. The woman who asked about the stone, genealogist Julie Mittendorf, was told it came from Wyoming, and had been “desacralized”.
Ms. Mittendorf did some genealogy research to learn more about Lena’s family tree. She was eventually able to contact a living relative, and the tombstone was reunited to Lena’s grave. The stone has been missing for 66 years.
Another story involves a lost wallet. A soldier named Wendell Lewis Jr. lost his wallet at Camp Roberts, (which is located in California). He lost his wallet sometime during the 1950’s, when he was stationed at Camp Roberts during the Korean War. The article I read about this said that sometimes people would steal someone’s wallet, take the cash, and then stash away the wallet so it wouldn’t be found.
Years later, Wendell Lewis Jr. got married to Jill Lewis. The couple had two daughters. Wendell died in 2012 at the age of 79. Sometime after his death, the family received a phone call to inform then that Wendell’s lost wallet had been located. The wallet contained a treasure trove of old photos of family members and three pennies that he carried with him. The pennies represented his wife and two daughters. It is amazing that the family was able to have the lost wallet returned to them, so many years after it went missing.
Image by gorbould on Flickr