The case of the travelling tombstone has taken a turn.
Last week we reported the discovery of a displaced grave marker up near Queen Margaret’s School.
The weathered old stone had been found in the bush and was reported to Duncan bylaw officer Garry Kerr, who, in turn, called the newspaper with the hope the community could help him solve the mystery and get the marker home.
Mystery solved.
“We’ve got some excellent response from the article,” Kerr said. “We got a number of responses that didn’t pan out and then a fellow in town here, a local business person who I’d never met before, he accessed Ancestry.com and some old government archives.”
The history buff followed the leads then handed his findings over to Kerr.
“Unbelievably, the little boy, he was three years, nine months, and he drowned in 1905, he was buried in a cemetery in Port Hope, Ontario.”
John William James Broadbent was born July 10, 1901 and died April 8, 1905.
“It’s absolutely confirmed that that is where this headstone came from,” Kerr said. “We’ve been in contact with the cemetery.”
The bylaw officer said the cemetery staff in Ontario explained to him that it looked as though the young child was Sarah and Jesse Broadbent’s firstborn and quite a few other children were born into the family thereafter.
“Being that it was a family plot, it looks like this small marker was taken away and replaced with a larger marker with other names on it,” Kerr said.
He learned that when that happens, quite often a family member or friend takes the original stone as a memento in lieu of it being destroyed.
But how it ended up getting to Duncan from Port Hope is still a mystery as evidence has yet to be found of any family having moved west.
The mystery continues…
SEE RELATED: Lost tombstone: City of Duncan officials look for rightful resting place
sarah.simpson@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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