LOST & FOUND

In 1815, the young wife of Jacob Kellum, Catharine Kellum died.  On her tombstone of white marble, all that was recorded was her name and age – 29 years, four months and six days.  Jacob, a farmer, buried her in a small hilltop graveyard on Section 20 of Ezra Martin's farm along what is now County Road 400, a few miles west of Connersville in Fayette County, Indiana.

Between then and 1999, the elements – wind, rain, snow, sleet, hail and of course withering heat in the summer – took their toll, until the stone broke into bits and eventually  these were buried in the ground.  There is no record of how long they remained hidden, but eventually one of the few gravestone restorers in the United States, who happens to live right there in Indiana, found 24 chunks of a tombstone that when matched like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle turned out to have Catharine's identifying information (above) on it.

In an article published by the Indianapolis Star in 1999, the story of John Walters, the grave restorer, and Catherine, the young wife who died in 1815, is told, along with stories of other graves he has found and worked on. 

It seems to me that Catharine has been lost for too long, and getting her tombstone back up and visually accessible is a step toward putting her in front of the genealogical community to be claimed. 

And she is certainly a good candidate for being an ImmortalNobody.

Detailed information can be found at the link below. 

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GAEMANUE/1999-12/0945659667