Bizarre local tombstone mystery takes another turn for the weird

Klaetsch inspects tombstone in 2008.

An unusual local mystery involving a tombstone found in the woods took another turn for the weird during the past week.

The story begins over six years ago - on March 10, 2008 – when Kevin Stafford discovered a “mysterious” tombstone in a wooded area off of Kendall Avenue, adjacent to Evergreen Elementary School, in Evergreen. The school system had acquired the property, located across Kendall Avenue and just east of the new school building, a short time prior to the find, and Stafford made the discovery while trying to locate an old water line.

Instead of a water line, he found an old tombstone in a wooded area near a pair of dilapidated wooden buildings on the property. The tombstone was found lying on the ground and there were no obvious gravesites in the area. The text on the tombstone read “Lillie Irene, Daughter of S.E. Gibbons, Born At Clayton, Ala., March 20th 1895, Died July 18th 1923, Gone But Not Forgotten.”

Thinking that the tombstone had been moved to the property, possibly by vandals, Superintendent of Education Ronnie Brogden called Evergreen police to report the discovery. Evergreen Police Detective Sean Klaetsch began to investigate, and city maintenance workers told him that the tombstone had been there for years.

Klaetsch teamed up with local cemetery expert Sherry Johnston of Evergreen, who also happened to be the president of the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance at the time.

Local archives and online databases showed that a Stephen E. Gibbons, also known as “Gebbons,” lived in the Old Town precinct in 1920. His wife’s name was Mary and his children were listed as George M., Jake, Maggie M. and a 22-year-old widowed daughter named Irene Weaver. Records also indicated that Irene may have died from complications due to the birth of a child in 1923.

Further investigation showed that Irene Gibbons was buried alongside her parents in the Gibbons family plot in the Old Evergreen Cemetery, which is located all the way on the other side of town from the new elementary school, near the intersection of Perryman Street and Shipp Street.

Klaetsch contacted The Courant about the discarded tombstone in hopes that a story in the newspaper would prompt someone to come forward with more information. The Courant published a story about the “mystery” tombstone on the front page of its March 13, 2008 edition, but no one came forward. Left with few options, city workers eventually took the discarded tombstone and laid it on top of Irene Gibbons’ grave in the Old Evergreen Cemetery, where it remains today.

Steele with tombstone found in Georgiana.

The story took another bizarre turn Wednesday of last week when Thomas Steele of Georgiana walked into the Evergreen-Conecuh County Public Library, asking to see Johnston, who works there as the staff genealogist and historian.

Steele, who works at apartment complexes in Georgiana and Castleberry, had been directed to Johnston for help with questions he had about a tombstone he’d found in his backyard in Georgiana. Steele had the tombstone in his vehicle, and when Johnston first saw it, she was somewhat speechless.

“It was an exact duplicate of the tombstone found in the woods by Evergreen Elementary School,” she said. “Same name, same dates, same ‘Gone But Not Forgotten,’ same everything.”

Steele, who knew nothing of the earlier story about Gibbons’ tombstone, told Johnston that he’d found the tombstone behind his house on Norrell Avenue in Georgiana.

“I thought her jaw was going to hit the floor,” he said.

Steele bought the house 16 years ago, and the tombstone had been propped against a cedar tree in the backyard ever since he’d lived there.

Steele bought the house from Tye Little in 1998, and Little said that the tombstone had been there for as long as he could remember.

“He told me that the woman’s family had been farmers in Clayton,” Steele told The Courant in a phone interview on Monday afternoon. “Supposedly, she’d died there and when they moved down here, the family took her tombstone with them, I guess to remember her by or something.”

Tombstone found in 2008 at Gibbons' grave in Evergreen.

On and off, over the course of a number of years, Steele and his wife began to investigate the tombstone on their own, hoping to put it back in it’s proper place.

“What threw us off was the Clayton, Alabama aspect of it,” he said. “The whole time, we thought she was buried up there, but it turned out she was 25 miles from the house the entire time. We knew she had a grave somewhere, but we weren’t expecting that.”

The house on Norrell Avenue was originally owned by the late Mamie Myrick, whose family sold the house to Little years ago.

“Mrs. Myrick was really old when I knew her, but she was very sharp-minded,” Steele said. “She told me that she didn’t know anything about any tombstone at the house and that there had never been one when she lived there, which caused us to believe that Little had propped it against the tree.”

Steele believes it’s possible that Little may have found the tombstone somewhere on the four acres of land behind the house and brought it into the yard.

“On and off over the years, my wife and I would try to research the name on the tombstone and about a month ago, we typed her name in the computer and, low and behold, we read that she was buried in Evergreen.”

Wednesday of last week, Steele took the tombstone to Evergreen City Hall, where city officials directed him to the library, where he ended up showing the tombstone to Johnston.

“I had no idea about everything that had happened earlier with the headstone found by the school,” Steele said. “When she showed me the old newspaper story from 2008, I was like ‘Wow.’ It’s just fascinating, and I’m proud of the results of our search.”

Due to the new developments in the story, Johnston began to search for Gibbons’ obituary and managed to find a one-paragraph reference to her death in a 1923 edition of The Courant. That short paragraph said that “the body of Mrs. Irene Weaver (Gibbons) of Georgiana was buried in Evergreen cemetery on Thursday last. Deceased was a daughter of S.E. Gibbons, who formerly was a resident of Evergreen.”

The discovery of another tombstone for Gibbons in Butler County only leaves researchers with more questions. Why were duplicate tombstones made for her in the first place? How did one end up in Georgiana while another one ended up in the woods in Evergreen? What new twists will the story take in the weeks and years to come?

No one can say for sure, but the situation is extremely odd.

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before,” Johnston said. “Dealing with cemeteries all the time, it’s one of the more unusual things I’ve ever run across or ever even heard about. We may never know the whole story.”

In the end, anyone with information about Gibbons and her multiple tombstones is asked to contact The Evergreen Courant at 251-578-1492 or Johnston at 251-578-2670.