As you may have guessed I’m into funky stories, and this one caught my attention so sharply I thought I’d share it with you.  First of all, get a load of this tombstone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you read the epitaphs?  Leonard Reed’s says “Death by Murder” and Elizabeth Reed’s says “Death by Hanging.”  Here’s what I know.

 

Elizabeth Reed is the first (and only) woman ever to be hanged in Illinois.  She’s said to have poisoned her husband by putting arsenic in his sassafras tea.  We happened upon their marker while exploring the Illinois countryside one day.  And I was blown away by two things.

 

One:  who would bury a confessed murderer beside her victim?  I mean, if someone had killed me, I’d want their body far, far away from mine.  Preferably encased in cement.  At the bottom of the ocean.  Which made me wonder if those who’d put them side-by-side felt the murder was justified.  Had he beaten her?  Did she see it as a mercy killing?  Who knows, but according to this account , her family moved her body after it was originally buried under the scaffold where she was hung.

Two:  who would decorate the grave of a confessed murderer?  I mean, from the picture, it looks like  all the pretties have been left there in his honor–but what you don’t see are the flowers on her side.  Which, I think, proves the old saying that time heals all wounds.  And if you die in a unique enough manner, people are bound to think you’re cool.      

One other interesting story we found on a marker in the same cemetery…I don’t remember their names, but the couple had been old when they died.  Their children’s names had been carved on the back of the monument—all nine of them.  In front, at the bottom, a short account about the couple; we’ll call them Rachel and Timothy:  Rachel escaped from a Shaker colony, floated across the Wabash River on a log, and married Timothy in Palestine, Illinois. 

Wow.  Now that girl had some spunk.  Kinda like a nineteenth century Jaz.  Gotta love her—and all nine of her kids!