This fine chunk of granite marks the graves at Salem Cemetery, southeast of Chariton, of Phoebe May (Arnold) and William H. Holmes, erected by a grieving husband a year after his wife had been killed in the most familiar sort of vehicular accident of the day --- a runaway.
Mr. Holmes was so pleased with the monument that he endorsed it in a brief news (or "advertorial" as it sometimes is called these days) item on the front page of The Chariton Leader of March 20, 1913: "I wish to say to those wanting a good monument and well lettered to call on the Chariton Granite and Marble Works. Mr. Harding erected a monument on my lot at Salem, which I am well pleased with, and I can recommend him as an all around workman in his line. W.H. Holmes"
William and May Holmes were prosperous farmers during 1912, when the accident occurred --- located on land south of Salem Church and Cemetery on the east side of the New York Road just beyond the Chariton River bottoms.
May was a daughter of Edward and Sophia (Barnhart) Arnold and William H., a son of Daniel and Mary Holmes, both old Benton Township families. They had married during 1879 and had seven children, the oldest three married; the younger four still at home.
May and son George, then 23, had driven into Chariton on June 26, 1912, on the Bluegrass Road behind a "green" team of colts. As they approached the South 8th Street crossing, headed for the square, a train whistle spooked the colts, they bolted and both May and George were thrown from the buggy. She died a few hours later of her injuries, he was only slightly injured.
William Holmes remarried during 1915 --- to the widow Alice McKinley Dorsey --- and lived to celebrate his 91st birthday before he died on March 18, 1948, and was buried beside May at Salem.
By that time, Olin Dexter Harding (1869-1933), who had begun work at the Chariton Granite and Marble Works during 1908, had died --- and someone else took charge of engraving Mr. Holmes' dates on his distinctive tombstone.
This image of William and May Holmes, probably their wedding photograph, was found in a Redlingshafer-Arnold family album.
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