The strange tale of the tombstone of Elvira Edmunds

My 5th great grandparents were Joseph Edmunds (1780-1859) and his wife Susannah Chapman (1782-1867).

The family lived in Brutus, Cayuga County, New York.   Another family researcher has told me that Joseph was baptized a Quaker, but I have not been able to substantiate this.   The census records indicate they were involved in agriculture.  They attended church at the Sennett Baptist Church in Sennett New York, about 4 miles from Brutus.  They had 7 children, but only 2 lived past the age of 25.  One of their daughters was Elvira, who died at the age of 19.

 A lot of the family was bured on a small family cemetery.  The cemetery was originally called The Joseph Remington Farm Cemetery and later called the Nathan Bowen Farm Cemetery.  This was a family cemetery of their son-in-law and located in Brutus, Cayuga County, New York.

Data on this cemetery was taken from the Skilton Records Index, Cayuga County.  The original material was probably a hand written listing of the tombstones, but I cannot find any exact references or dates the cemetery might have been read.  I cannot find any listing or pictures of tombstones on www.findagrave.com, which is my "go to" website for cemetery listings and pictures.

Here is the listing of burials in this cemetery, from the USGenWeb site for Cayuga County: (http://www.cayugagenealogy.org/cem/cem19.htm):

Edwards  (Copied Edmunds)*
  Joseph  d. 2/6/1859 ae 78-10-14 b. 20-3-1780
  Susannah w. d. 4/11/1867 ae 84-4-22 b. 19-11-1786
  Elvira  dau. d. 12/21/1822 ae 19-8-2
  Joseph  son d. 7/19/1822 ae 2-3-11
  Cyrus   d. 10/2/1828 ae 18-2-25

I point out the daughter listed as Elvira Edmunds.  She's listed as having died on December 21, 1822, aged 19 years, 8 months and 2 days.

So, as I was working on this family, everything was pretty straightforward.  One of my research tools is to do a google search on the names of the family members.   As I was doing a search on Elvira Edmunds, look what I found!

I found a listing for Captain Tony's Saloon in Key West Florida. (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/roadtrippers/key-west-bar_b_5094066.html)
 Apparently, buried in the floor of this bar, is a tombstone:

(Photo credit: www.findagrave.com)

According to this website, it indicates that the saloon was remodelled in the 1980s and the floor was taken up.  Under the old plywood flooring, they unearthed Elvira's tombstone.  The tombstone itself is now exposed in the cement on the floor next to the pool table.

(Photo credit: www.huffingtonpost.com)

Undoubtably, this is our ancestor's daughter.  The death date and age at death is EXACTLY the same as what is on the cemetery listing.  It also indicates her parents names - which match EXACTLY.

So here's the mystery....... How does the tombstone of a young New England Baptist girl end up in a floor in a bar at Key West Florida?

Possible theories:

1)  She ran away from home to Florida, died and buried in Florida.  Her family was so embarrassed that they had the cemetery listing made with her being buried in New York?

But here's a better question -  How does a girl from New York in the early 1800s even get to Florida? Women had no rights, no income.  They usually couldn't travel by themselves.  

2)   My Aunt Sue suggested that perhaps she died and the family couldn't pay for the tombstone, so the tombstone was not used for the burial and somehow ended up in Florida.  I personally think this is probably the best explanation.

3)  Another article (https://www.ghostsandgravestones.com/key-west/captain-tonys-saloon) indicates there was a terrible hurricane in 1865.  This article indicates that Captain Tony's used to be a morgue. And with the hurricane, some bodies were lost.  The article postulates that perhaps Elvira's was one of the missing bodies.  This one also seems highly unlikely.

4) Yet another article on https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10913211/elvira-edmunds, writes the following:

Elvira was 19 years old when she was killed by her husband, a mortician. This is impossible to document 182 years after the fact. Buried in a morgue that was demolished by a 1847 hurricane, her tombstone was found by Tony Tarracino. Tony of Captain Tony's Saloon in Key West, simple built his saloon around it. Some say she is the shadowy figure that haunts Key West's most famous bar today.

I think this one is just a story, written to explain the presence of a tombstone in a saloon.

So, we will probably never know, unless we're able to find newspaper articles from the time period.

 

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update from 21 December 2020:  

 

I received an email about this tombstone:   Here's the email verbatim:

 

"I saw your post about Elvira. Today is the anniversary of her death. A couple of decades ago, one of Captain Tony's kids told me he got the tombstone from a farm in NY. Don't know the details, but I'm pretty confident he imported the grave to Key West.  He didn't seem like the grave robbing type, so I'm sure there is a story, but we might never know what it is.".

 

Glad that we have a resolution to this strange story.