Facebook sleuths help Greenfield police crack mystery of toddler’s traveling gravestone
Greenfield police think they may have pinned down the origins of a roaming 133-year-old gravestone that has twice been randomly found in the town.
The department reported Wednesday on their Faceboook page that an 18-inch tall headstone reading “Charles Friedrich Wilhelm — son of Charles and Natalie Raguse — died on April 2, 1882’’ was found Tuesday in the Davis Street community garden.
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Strangely, it wasn’t the first time this same headstone has popped up in Greenfield around this time of year. According to police, the headstone was found by someone cleaning their yard down the road near 158 Davis Street back on November 14, 2014.
Police said Wednesday they were unable to immediately locate the stone’s original location and asked the public for help — which they got. Facebook user Luanne Chapin of Three Rivers — and her “excellent sleuthing skills,’’ as police put it — was able to track down a cemetery in neighboring Shelburne via findagrave.com with a Raguse family stone, as well as a marker reading “Charles F.’’, from the same 19th-century time period.
According to findagrave.com, “Charles Frederick William Raguse’’ was born September 25, 1879 in Shelburne and died April 2, 1882 in Buckland, and is buried with his parents and siblings at Arms Cemetery in Shelburne.
Chapin theorized in a Facebook comment on the original post that the mystery headstone was the original stone used for the child at his burial, but was then replaced at the time of his father’s death shortly thereafter when the family bought a larger plot.
On Thursday, Greenfield police announced they could confirm the mysterious, traveling headstone belongs to Charles F. Raguse, a two-year-old who died in 1882 and is buried with his family in Shelburne.
Additionally, they said they recieved permission to return Charles’ headstone to his family’s site, and a local monument business volunteered to clean the stone to “return it to respectable condition.’’
But the story doesn’t end there.
“Now, comes the freaky part,’’ police said in a comment.
When one of the police officers put the headstone into his car to bring it to be refurbished, en route to the stone’s final return, the first song that came on the radio was Ozzy Osborne’s eery single “Mama I’m Coming Home.’’
“All 100% true…’’ police said. “I’m not savvy enough to make this stuff up…’’
Police haven’t yet confirmed how the gravestone traveled from Arms Cemetery to the several Davis Street locations, though in another comment, Chapin says that, according to the 1885 Greenfield directory, a local marble worker operated his business on Davis Street.
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