To the Editor:

Pictures of a cracked gravestone ran with this ad: “$100, Glenmont, NY,  Over 150 years old. Found when digging in my yard. No bodies, no creepy story — I already checked with the town! Great for Halloween ... Don’t use a cheezy foam tombstone, get the real thing!”

A number of readers of the Capital Region online Garage Sale page on Facebook were more than a little startled to see the above ad — and some (not knowing all the details) more than a little outraged … 

The pictured, cracked stone said: “James, son of Robert and Ruth Matthews, died May 20, 1850, aged [?] years and 1 month.”

The advertiser had found the broken little marble headstone several years ago being used to edge a garden alongside her house between Kenwood Avenue and the Normanskill. Querying the town and local historical societies — a wise first step! — she was told there’d never been a cemetery there and that she could dispose of the stone. Disposing of it didn’t sit right with her, so she left it inside her garage and only revisited the issue of what to do with it prior to a move.

Albany cemetery blogger Paula Lemire contacted me, wondering if the headstone could’ve been from the St. John’s Catholic Cemetery that used to be between View Avenue and Catherine Street south of Delaware Avenue.

It was a reasonable theory — north of the Normanskill, the Groesbeckville area had once been part of the town of Bethlehem. Headstones from the former cemetery have periodically been discovered having been used as pavers in alleys and yards in Albany’s South End.

Cemetery records did show there had been a Robert Matthews (1789-1849) in it, but given that Bethlehem has had so many little small farm family cemeteries further research seemed advisable.

The 1850 United States Census had a better possible fit for the parents of James: Robert Matthews born in about 1816 and Ruth born in about 1822 living in the town of New Scotland. A family tree on Ancestry showed that family with two children, Mary Jane Matthews (1849-1932) and James Matthews (1851-1934).

Later censuses showed members of the family living in Guilderland from 1855-1875, and in Albany thereafter. Church records, also on Ancestry, recorded baptisms for Mary Jane and James in the New Scotland Presbyterian Church. Findagrave.com and Billiongraves.com both showed members of the family in Guilderland’s Prospect Hill Cemetery.

Could the James, born around 1851, have been named for an earlier child that died in infancy?

Karen Beck, president of the Bethlehem Historical Association, arranged with the headstone’s owner to withdraw the sale and for me to take custody of the headstone pending further research … .

Global Positioning System on Billiongraves is not always reliable, but in this case it was … Five granite headstones stand in a row in Prospect Hill Cemetery: Brother, Father, Mother, Mary J. Matthews (1849-1932) and James Matthews (1851-1934). 

Could the “Brother” stone be the infant James?  If the granite headstones were arranged chronologically in order of death from left to right, it seemed increasingly likely.

I visited the Prospect Hill Cemetery and called its superintendent, Harold E. Smith III. He checked cemetery records and found that the Matthews plot included reinterments from the New Scotland Presbyterian Church’s churchyard. He agreed to let the marble headstone be placed in the cemetery, provided it was repaired.

The conservation of headstones is not something to be undertaken without some training. Firstly, one should note that headstones should not ordinarily be removed in order to work on them. The James Matthews headstone was an exception only because it was found in a place where it had never belonged.

At my home, I was able to clean the headstone using D2 Biological Cleanser, something I’d learned to do from attending workshops run by Kelly Grimaldi at St. Agnes Cemetery and also by Joe Ferrannini of Grave Stone Matters of Hoosick. 

Cleaning headstones with the wrong materials, like bleach or hydrochloric acid, wire brushes, pressure washers, or sandblasting can all do irreversible damage to stones. I also got in touch with Cameron Smith in Troy, who had some of the proper materials for repairing headstones. He and his wife Alysia Hamilton have been very active in trying to improve the New Mount Ida Cemetery in Troy, and have arranged on multiple occasions to have Joe Ferrannini work there.

While working on the James Matthews headstone to reunite it with his remains and his family in Prospect Hill Cemetery, the story took another turn … I was emailed by Kim Loefke from California, who’d read the story of the headstone online and had gotten my contact information from the woman who had advertised the stone for sale. 

Kim Loefke wrote, “It was intriguing because about 10 years ago, my dad, who lives in Guilderland, also unearthed some stones from our old farmhouse driveway and walkway. One of the stones, which he still is in possession of says, ‘Robert Mathews, died in his 36th year on April 18, 1853.’” 

Her research pointed to the same family in Prospect Hill Cemetery as well. She put me in touch with her father, Jimmy Brust, who agreed to let me take custody of Robert Matthew’s headstone. I worked on cleaning it and arranged for Cameron Smith to help by repairing it, and I got in touch again with the Prospect Hill Cemetery superintendent.

Kim Loefke shared her part of the story: “In about 2003, a man stopped by my dad’s place in Guilderland and asked if he could go over the property with a metal detector. (He was looking for Revolutionary War items). When he was finished, he asked Dad what was up with the headstone in the driveway … 

“Not knowing what he was talking about, the guy showed him the stone at the end of the barn by Jack’s old doghouse. He asked for a shovel or trowel and he proceeded to unearth the stone. As he flipped it up, there was the perfectly preserved inscription — “Robert Matthews, died April 18th, 1853 in the 36th year of his age.”

“The man also mentioned that there were a couple more stones by the front porch. After digging those out, unfortunately they found the inscriptions worn away and unreadable. When asked about the main stone in general, my grandfather said that it had always been there and that it had been there when he was ‘courting Granny’ (about 1939). Our family has owned the house and property since 1892.

“As I researched Robert’s family, I found out that on the 1850 United States Census, he was married to Ruth and had a daughter, Mary J. Matthews. He was from Ireland and lived in New Scotland, not far from my father’s place in Guilderland. Ruth never remarried and she and her daughter, Mary Jane, lived together [as recorded] on some of the subsequent census records. My father put the stone in his barn where it sat until 2018.

“In April 2018, I called my father to tell him of our upcoming road trip to New York. He said that he wanted to share something strange that had happened. A few days before, a friend of my brother’s had stopped by to inquire about buying a tractor.

“While he was talking to Dad, he asked him if he still had that headstone around. He did and took him into the barn to see it. He read out the stone, ‘Robert Matthews, died April 18th, 1853 in the 36th year of his age.’

“My dad looked up and said, ‘That’s weird. TODAY is April 18th!’ What were the chances that after all of these years, somebody would stop by and asked about Robert’s headstone on the exact date of his death?

“The story gets better! So, my dad asked if I had found out any more info on Robert. I confessed that I hadn’t but with so many years having passed and so many new records going online, I told him I’d look into his family again.”

From there, she found a note I’d posted on the family tree on Ancestry.com, on Findagrave, and a Spectrum News story “Local Woman Looks to Sell 1850 Headstone.” During the course of the work Cameron and I did at my house cleaning and repairing the headstones, she was able to visit to see it in progress.

How did the headstones come to be separated from the graves they marked? I’d guess that possibly the two surviving children, in having their relatives reinterred, had disposed of the marble headstones in anticipation of purchasing a large granite family monument that would have had all the names and dates, but then they just never got around to that purchase for one reason or another, with the result that only the individual granite headstones with “Brother,” “Father,” and “Mother” were there.  

One finds, sometimes, that families that long ago switched from marble to granite used the old marble as foundation material for the granite; a better solution, given that no confusion results.

The discarded marble headstones may have been stacked in a junk pile at the original cemetery and others took them from there to repurpose, or maybe they’d gone to a stone scrap dealer of some kind before being reused.

I met Prospect Hill Cemetery Superintendent Smith in the cemetery on June 15 to set the headstones there.  Kim Loefke and her family, in town for Father’s Day, visited about a half-hour later.

Final repairs were performed on July 4th, amidst the fragrant creeping thyme growing wild in the cemetery’s sandy soil, bringing a possible end to this story. But there probably is a marble headstone somewhere out there for the mother, Ruth Matthews, so one never knows!

Christopher Philippo

Glenmont

Editor’s note: Kim Loefke adds, “It was amazing to be a part of the crazy chain of events that led to a perfect and touching ending.”