The puzzles of Lucas County's oldest marked grave

This is the tombstone of Mary Sutphin Scott Howard whose remains occupy the oldest marked grave in Lucas County. The inscription reads, "Mary, Wife of J. Howard, Dau. of J.A. & R. Sutphin, Died Oct. 12, 1850, Aged 47 yrs, 2 ms, 19 ds."

Mary is one of the subjects of this year's 19th annual Chariton Cemetery Heritage Tour, scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24, so I'm not going to write much about her here. But I have been struggling to figure out how Mary, in the script I'm composing for her portrayer, should describe her own burial. 

When Mary died, Chariton was less than a year old --- having been located and named the preceding September. Mary and her husband, John Howard, owned and probably lived on 320 acres they had obtained indirectly from Buck Townsend that encompassed the original Chariton Point settlement, including the Townsend cabin at the south end and the Mormon pioneer graves at the north end around which what we call Douglass Pioneer Cemetery developed.

But another pioneer cemetery would be established within Chariton town limits --- on the block now occupied by Columbus Elementary School.

The current Chariton Cemetery was not established until 1864 and after that, the graves at the Columbus School site were moved and, within a few years, Douglass Cemetery was largely abandoned.

Annie Marie (Scott) Bentley was Mary Howard's only daughter and two statements regarding her grave can be tracked to her, or her children: That Mary's grave was the first in the Chariton Cemetery and that her remains had been moved from the Columbus School site.

These statements can be interpreted a couple of ways ---  that Mary's grave was the first at the Columbus School site or that her remains were the first to be buried in the new cemetery when the Columbus graves were moved from the old cemetery. Or, I suppose, both.

On the other hand, there are reasons to consider the possibility that Mary had been buried originally in the Douglass Cemetery, which she actually owned when she died, rather than in Chariton.

Part of the problem here is the fact Chariton Cemetery records prior to about 1890 simply don't exist; what we do have, woven into the continuing record, are tombstone readings from earlier graves made when the Stanton family started to keep comprehensive records.

I've got one more source to check before deciding which way to go here --- so stay tuned.