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| Sheriff's photo of Smith stone |
Mystery of Three Oklahoma Tombstones Solved
By Dennis Muncrief
March 5, 2001
Three tombstones found along an Oklahoma highway were returned to
their original location.
In April of 2000, I was in the Green Hill cemetery in Davis, Oklahoma
doing a cemetery registry. This cemetery is quite large and has a full
time sexton and cemetery maintenance crew. After a few days in the cemetery,
the Sexton stopped by to see what was going on. I told him I was registering
the cemetery. We began talking about different cemeteries that he wanted
me to know about. He then asked me if I knew about the grave markers the
Murray County Sheriff had locked up. I told him I didn't know about them
and he suggested that I go to the Sheriff's office.
In 1998, the Murray County, Oklahoma Sheriff's office was notified by
citizens that there were three tombstones laying in the ditch along U.S.
Hwy 77 north of the community of Joy, OK. The Sheriff, Marvin McCracken,
was most accommodating and wanted to get the tombstones out of his custody.
The Sheriff said that they had run articles in the county newspapers and
conducted interviews on regional TV asking for help. No information came
forward. He asked me if there was anything I could do. The first thing
I did was take photos of the stones. I then went to the online cemetery
record websites such as Interment.net and ran the names through all the
search engines. I searched all the Oklahoma OKGenWeb sites for cemeteries
and their listings. I searched the LDS website for the names. I searched
DAR listings. Not a clue.
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| Sheriff's photo of Umphry stone |
I then sent an email to Bill Spurlock of SavingGraves.com
as I had know him for some time. He put an article on the website asking
for help.. Still nothing, not a hint of where they went.
I finally had to start some intense detective work. Why were the stones
left where they were? I figured that a bunch of kids had been out partying
in a cemetery and had just enough beer to get brave enough to steal some
tombstones. They probably got scared when they started to sober up and
decided to dump them before they got caught. I went back and asked the
Sheriff an odd question, "On which side of the highway were the stones
found?" He called the Deputy that had taken the call, and he said they
were found on the west side of the highway. They wanted to know why I
asked. I told them "at least we know which direction they came FROM".
Two miles north of Joy is the Garvin County line.
Brenda Choate is the Garvin County coordinator for the OKGenWeb project.
She and I have shared information on occasion. I sent her an email about
the stones and asked her for any assistance she could render as I was
at my wits end. I told her that I though the stones may have come from
an African American (AA) cemetery because one of the names on the stones
was Richmond LOVE. I told her that all the people I ever met named Love
were black. She started searching her records and emailed me in about
a month that she indeed had a Richmond Love on her registry for the Bethlehem
Cemetery in Pauls Valley, OK. The only problem was that this Richmond
Love was 25 years younger than the one on the stone. His stone was still
in place.
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| Sheriff's photo of Love stone |
I drove to Pauls Valley and looked at the Bethlehem Cemetery. It was
indeed an AA cemetery. There was indeed several LOVE's buried in the cemetery
and there was a Richmond Love, but, the ages were wrong. Brenda and I
put our heads together and after several emails we decided that my Richmond
Love must have been the father of the Richmond Love in the Bethlehem Cemetery.
But I couldn't find a single tombstone base with a missing tombstone.
So, the missing stone did not come from Bethlehem. It had to come from
another AA cemetery in Garvin County. But Brenda had recently done the
registries of all the cemeteries in Garvin County and there was not another
Richmond Love.
After several more emails I discovered that the DAR had done the registries
of all the WHITE cemeteries in Garvin county in 1972. They had not registered
a single AA cemetery. By the time Brenda got to registering them, the
theft had already occurred.
On Feb 11, 2001 Brenda emailed me saying that I needed to go to Hopewell
Cemetery, a small AA cemetery four miles north of Wynnewood, OK (and 8
miles from where the stones were found) and take a good look around. I
went the following Saturday in the rain and mud and found a tombstone
base with the name LOVE carved into it. Next to it was a marker of a woman
named LOVE with a birth date of 1859. Bingo! But that is not conclusive
proof that they ALL came from this cemetery. I continued walking in the
rain until I found a group of SMITH tombstones. I searched around the
area and found another base with a missing tombstone. I then measured
the "shadows" of the tombstones on the bases. The next Monday I returned
to the Sheriffs office and measured the tombstones. They were identical
in dimension.
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| Dennis with the Love stone returned to its original
location. |
On February 24th, 2001, Brenda Choate and I returned the three stolen
tombstones to the Hopewell Cemetery to their rightful place. Sadly, the
UMPHRY stone is not on it's rightful gravesite as there were several stones
broken off at the base with missing stones. There were no other Umphrys
in the cemetery in marked graves. We leaned the stone against a tree in
hopes that a family member would re-place it. On March 1, 2001, I returned
to the Sheriffs office to report that the stones were back in the rightful
place. He was most grateful and relieved.
Those of you who say that there is nothing you can do, let this be a
lesson in diligence and perseverance. It just became a cause. How can
somebody steal a tombstone? Brenda and I could not just let this one pass.
We did nothing heroic or exceptional. We spent a lot of time in cemeteries
just looking around. We took a lot of drives in the country. We read many
registries. We did not tell the newspapers or the TV stations of the return
of the stones. Only we and the county sheriff know what happened. It took
nearly 3 years, but they are home now.
- Dennis Muncrief
Dennis has recorded many of the cemeteries in and around Murray
County, OK, and is the coordinator of the Murray County OKGenWeb.
E-mail him at mudman@brightok.net
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