Empty grave still holds family story
It was a fall day in 1914 when Sampson Undertakers of Pittsburgh drove an “auto ambulance” through the gates of Butler’s North Side Cemetery.
Armed with shovels, the men dug until their spades struck the top of a coffin holding the remains of a long-dead war hero.
Leaving the ornate headstone in place, the workers loaded the soldier’s remains into the ambulance to be reburied in Pittsburgh.
The grave diggers quietly filled in the grave and, to have their work go unnoticed, covered it with the original top layer of grass.
It was eight months later and a few days before Memorial Day in 1915, when members of the local Grand Army of the Republic Post (a Civil War veterans organization) and the soldier’s sisters, who still resided in the family home on North Main Street, discovered they would have one less soldier’s grave to decorate.
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