Mysterious Sudbury Gravestones To Be Returned To Natick Cemetery

SUDBURY, MA — It looks like the mystery of two gravestones found in a 220-year-old Sudbury shed used to store hearses will be solved just in time for Halloween.

Sudbury is in the process of returning the gravestones found in the 1799 Hearse House — a structure at the Revolutionary War Cemetery that once stored Sudbury's lone funeral carriage — to their original home in Natick. The repatriation of the stones is happening thanks to the diligence of local historians.

There were three gravestones originally housed at a Sudbury Department of Public Works building near the town center, but were moved to the Hearse House in 2007 when the building was renovated. There they sat until two Sudbury Historical Commission members noticed them last winter and began to unravel the mystery.

Members of the Sudbury Historical Society were able to determine that two of the stones were from the Old Burying Ground in South Natick and belonged to Jemima Morse (died: 1803) and John Jones (died: 1801).

Jemima Morse was married to David Morse, a school teacher and Revolutionary War figure.

"He was a private in Captain Joseph Morse’s Company at Lexington Alarm and also Colonel Patterson’s Mass Militia in 1776. He was a captain in the militia and a 'forty day man' at Rhode Island in 1780," a slideshow on the stones by historical society trustees Steve Greene and Elin Neiterman said.

John Jones, a Weston mapmaker and also a Revolutionary War figure, was actually David Morse's uncle by marriage, according to the researchers. That relationship helped place Jones' stone near the Morse plot at the Old Burying Ground. A 1980s Massachusetts Historical Commission survey of the Natick cemetery showed that Jemima was once buried next to David.

All that's left is for the Sudbury Select Board to relinquish ownership of the gravestones to Natick, which is set to happen at Tuesday's meeting. Natick Historical Commission chair Steve Evers has secured funding for the move.

Read Greene and Neiterman's presentation on the gravestones here: