As I have never come across a problem like this before, I put this to the experienced researchers out there.
When searching for relatives, I am familiar with death dates being off anywhere between one to ten years, the surname misspelled and/or the given names reversed or misspelled, but not the body being misplaced completely!
How does one lose a dead body? No, I’m not asking for ideas from The Godfather, or The Sopranos.
When trying to locate a deceased person’s burial, you would look for an obituary to confirm a burial took place and where it occurred, right? I thought so, and that’s what I did!
Finding the town’s webpage, I sent an e-mail to the City Clerk, inquiring where the cemetery is located in the community, and what section my relative is buried in.
The clerk replied to confirm the spelling of his name – that seemed odd to me, but simple reasoning explained it away as thorough investigating on the clerk’s part.
She soon responded again, that there was only one cemetery in town and my relative was not in it!
How can that be? The obituary said ….
A relative transcribed it from the newspaper.
I went and googled it, to check for errors, and found the newspaper …
So, I contacted them.
The Editor responded in kind with a PDF copy of the entire page, below is the obituary.
WILKIE PRESS (Unity, Saskatchewan), 23 December 1970
The next attempt was the cemetery photograph website, FIND A GRAVE.
There are only 4 FARDING burials on record and Lorne is not among them.
I have the same problem with my great-grandfather and great-great grandmother.
My father and aunt told me that my great-grandfather, Stanley Cockayne (he died in 1963), is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River, Massachusetts, which is the same cemetery Lizzie Borden is buried. I called them, found his wife and son, but they had no records of Stanley himself.
I found the obituary of my great-great grandmother, Bridget T. McRae (she died in 1926) and it said that she’s buried in Calvary Cemetery, Brockton, MA, the same cemetery as her children. I called them and they told me they had no records of her being buried there. So for kicks, I called the cemetery her husband is buried in. She’s not there either!
HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOU, HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOU, HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY DEAR KAAAAALLLLEEE , HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOUUUU!
And Happy Christmas to you and all your little rabbits, Sheri
I will refrain from singing, I’ll frighten off everyone 🙂