I don’t know when or why two dozen intact headstones, and bits of several more, were piled atop one another in Odd Fellow cemetery’s midsection, or who did it. (Though I don’t believe this was the city’s dirty work.) Here’s the way I found a buried stack in the pile.

After disassembling the visible stack, I prodded the earth around it for hidden stones. My soil probe struck a solid surface here:

I snapped the wisteria runners with a lopper, brushed away soil and leaves, and found this:

I turned it over — the top half, and below that the bottom half, of the headstone of infant Johnnie McNeal. (And a few pieces from a different grave marker.)

Below McNeal’s headstone, another came into view.

This belonged to Belle Dewey, who died in the middle of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.

And under Belle Dewey’s stone, half the headstone of Adeline, wife of Daniel S[mith], plus more bits of others.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, January 2021.