Sometimes while doing research for other stories (or for books), we come across interesting stories that aren’t long enough for a blog post but are still interesting! Here are a few:
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- December 1946 – Police rushed to the scene after a woman reporting a freshly dug grave near her home. The grave was adorned with a large floral display. Deputy Sheriff Ben Brown dug for several minutes before finding a large box tied with a fancy ribbon. The scene was silent as the Deputy Sheriff lifted the box from the ground and untied the ribbon to see a large silk handkerchief inside. In it, he found a dead canary.
- March 1802 (reported December 1802) – While Jonathan Dayton attended a session of Congress in Washington DC, he had an experience of “Spontaneous Combustion”. While undressing himself at bedtime, Dayton removed a pair of silk stockings he wore over a pair of woolen stockings. He dropped the silk stockings onto a woolen carpet near the side of the bed. One of his garters fell down with the silk stockings. The white woolen stockings were tossed farther away, near the foot of the bed. Dayton noticed a bit of sparking when he separated the silk stockings from the wool ones, which he gave no mind, since he had seen that before. He slept through the night as normal. In the morning a servant entered in the morning to kindle the fire, waking Dayton. Dayton then noticed his silk stockings were a brown color and one of his leather slippers was burnt. The garter that fell next to the silk stocking was charred but intact. Upon closer examination, the leather slipper and the garter only were burnt in the parts that had been in contact with the silk stockings. Both Dayton and the servant attending him noted there were no candles burning in the room and the fireplace was at least 9 feet away and burning low. Based on the evidence, they concluded it was spontaneous combustion.
- September 1997 – A plain pine box with the skeletal remains of at least two early Daytonians, buried in St Henry Cemetery in the late 1800s, was laid to rest during a service and burial at Calvary Cemetery. Workers found the bones while laying a sewer line for the Miami Valley Hospital’s new Emergency and Surgery Complex. Cemetery Superintendent Rick Meade provided green carpeting and a red tent, hospital carpenters made the pine box, and Miami Valley sent a pot of mums for the service. The land had been the site of St Henry’s Catholic Cemetery. The city of Dayton had grown around St Henry’s, leaving it with no room to expand. The cemetery hit hard times, unable to keep up with maintenance. That’s when the trustees decided to sell the cemetery and move the bodies to Calvary. Roughly 6,000 bodies were moved from St Henry to Calvary, and 4,013 were unclaimed. The unclaimed were buried in a mass grave at Calvary Cemetery where the Memorial Chapel stands. The chapel was built from funds derived from the sale of St Henry and dedicated to the unclaimed souls. The Memorial Chapel was dedicated on All Souls Day, November 2, 1902. In the service provided for the reinterred, Rev. Richard Knuge, chaplain at Miami Valley Hospital, read “We commend these remains to the Lord, that the Lord may embrace them in peace and raise up their bodies on the last day”, from the Roman Ritual, Order of Christian Funerals. “We are dust and into dust we shall return. Blessed is the Lord.”
Dayton Unknown 