I FOUND A HEADSTONE IN MY 125-YEAR-OLD VICTORIAN HOUSE

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]Good evening. This is Eric Williams again with Mississippi Rural Living. I'm coming to you from a different location.

[00:00:07]The weather's been a little strange lately. Last night we had tremendous lightning, thunderstorms. It was kind of fun really, especially with the metal roof on this house. It's kind nice to hear the rainfall. Today we're supposed to have some more of the same, but it's not quite the same. It's, you know, we're still no rain at this point anyway. Put it that way. But likely this evening we'll get some as it goes on.

[00:00:27]But part of the reason I'm here is just because, as I've mentioned to you all before, I find unique things in this house. And again, I found another unique item. This one might some folks might find a little creepy and a little more than peculiar. This is actually a headstone for someone that was in the box here still. I got to looking at it and I thought, well, that is not typical. When I first glanced, I thought it was for perhaps a pet. You know, some people, you know, they have uh headsets made for the dog or something like that, you know. But as I got to reading, I thought, "No, no, this is for a person."

[00:00:59]So it was for Bessie Ruth Kellum. I thought, "Huh, I don't know who that lady was, born in 1920." The time period then got me to thinking about um well, not only just life in Rome, Mississippi, but also you have death in Rome, Mississippi. It just got me to thinking about things. I I just to give you a little background. Aside from buying old houses and things, I used to live in Naches, Mississippi, where I conducted um I I bought literally every book you could find on the city of Natches. Over 100 books I owned. And so within those, I found some unique interesting stories to deal with hauntings and things in the town. So I started and I created my own ghost tour.

[00:01:39]And I did that for 5 years. It was pretty successful. And so the city of Nachas came to me and asked me would I conduct their history sightseeing tours in the daytime. said, "Sure, no problem." You see, I I had no problem talking, so it seemed like a natural fit for me. So, I went ahead to do that then. It was fun. I really did enjoy that. That was my favorite job I think I've ever had in my life. It was a lot of fun. Met so many interesting, wonderful people from all over the world. So, it was a great time. But getting back to this headstone though, which I say this is unusual to find still in the box in the house and it was never placed. I think that's kind of sad in a way. I wish I knew where the lady was. I'd go take it to her, but unfortunately I don't know that information. But I just wanted to kind of from my research what I was able to find then. I just kind of, you know, checked into what it was like in 1905.

[00:02:24]If someone in your home uh had passed away, um, you know, we didn't have hospitals here at that point in time.

[00:02:30]Not in Little Lexington, Mississippi.

[00:02:32]Uh, nothing like that was available.

[00:02:33]There was a town doctor, of course, and that was about it. We didn't have funeral homes, not here at that point in time. Uh if you drove 26 mi north of here to Belleone, Mississippi, that was the first funeral home in the general area for quite some distance. Uh it wasn't until 1915 when they had I think there were four funeral homes in the entire state of Mississippi at that point in time and they then passed certain rules and regulations on inbalming and things of that nature. But it was really kind of nothing really paid attention to because with only four funeral homes, it's it's not a big issue, you know. And so it wasn't until 1940s that you actually got a functioning funeral home in the town of Lexington. And so people died in their homes. They weren't near hospitals here at that point in time either. We do have a small county hospital here now. But um people pass away in their homes generally. And so when this happened then usually the ladies of the house would tend to the body then. You know it was their last way to you know send off their loved one and show their love and respect for that person. They would and if they couldn't do it, if they were too emotionally distraught over the matter, which could definitely be the case, uh, neighbor ladies or church ladies would come in to help and stand in for them and, you know, let them grieve if they, you know, handle the situation as they needed to. And so, but the last thing they would do generally would be to thoroughly clean the body um, and dress them in their Sunday best, you know, get them prepared, make them, you know, look as nice as they could. And at that point in time, if that when that would have occurred in this house, the reason I'm sitting where I am, this would have likely been where the body would have been placed uh because you have the front door is just right over here uh just to the left of me and guests would have come in to to view the body and then a lot of ladies, neighbors would have come in bringing food uh different things, you know, just to help, you know, because food production was a major issue in that time. So, anything they could do to take the burden off the family, that was what they wanted to do.

[00:04:30]that were good neighbors. A lot of the people from the church you attended would would come and they would do whatever they could to help out, to offer moral support. Uh your preacher would usually come and he would, you know, give a sermon and sometimes a couple of times he would come. Um it was a community event of a sort, but very solemn, of course, but you would still have a lot of people come over just to, you know, pay their respects to the dead. And it was just a common thing.

[00:04:55]you know, people get together and they just have to relate their their funny stories, things that they can remember about that person, what made them special to someone else. And it was really kind of a very loving, very kind-hearted thing that they did. And you had the the entire community kind of got involved in it. And so it was a very different time, a different way to handle it now than what we do nowadays.

[00:05:14]Nowadays, death is I don't know, death is death. It's it's never a good thing.

[00:05:19]It's always kind of the pits, I guess you could say. But it's it's handled so strangely now. It's all hands off, you know. It's all so I don't know organized and processed and it's it's a very different situation. I don't know something kind of I'd kind of think about how that would have been in 1905 and think, you know, it'd be kind of comforting to know that your loved ones that are, you know, sending you off in your last bit, you know, before you taken to the graveyard. But at that point in time then they would when the person would would pass away, they didn't have a place where you could go and pick out caskets. There was no store for that in town. one had to be manufactured and made for the person based on their size and dimensions, that sort of thing. Um, and then there would generally be a wagon that would come and would they take the body out of the house, put it on the wagon then, and then the family and the neighbors, everyone, they would walk behind the wagon and take follow along until they got to the cemetery, which wasn't terribly far from here. It was about six blocks away from here. And so it wasn't a terribly long walk, but it moved at a very slow pace just to give people time to contemplate and think, you know, along the way until they got there. And then the preacher would be there again to give the graveside ceremony and to to for the vital burial. U they would always have a variety of herbs and flowers and things that they would put on top of the grave before it was lowered into the ground. And then a few handfuls of dirt would be tossed in. And at that point, you know, they would allow that the gravediggers, which were usually your neighbors, family, friends that helped dig the grave, you know, it wasn't like we do today where you have machines come out and, you know, dig a hole. It wasn't like that. No, this was actually sweat and labor involved by people who cared about this person. So, it's just I don't know. It's just a it was much more personal back then. Let's put it that way. People were really, you know, looked at life differently, I guess. Respected it more, it seems like to me in a lot of ways. But anyway, I guess this may have been not the typical type of um show I normally do, but I just got to thinking about and I thought, you know, death is just as important as life sometimes. I think sometimes it needs to be talked about.

[00:07:20]And I thought, why not explain how things would have been handled in this house at that point in time, say 1905 for example, just as a random year to use. But and I say finding this in the house just was kind of a I don't know, a some sort of a side to me that maybe that's what I need to do. It kind of got me back to thinking a little bit about my ghost tour days because I did talk a lot about bed. Obviously, when I would do my ghost tours, I would go to the cemetery in Natches and talked about a lot of different people in there. Um, but part of the reason I did the ghost tours too was just from personal experiences. Um, in the house I lived in in Natchez, um, it was it was called, uh, Aunt Franny's Bed and Breakfast. It was a big old two-story house um on at 611 North Union Street and it was a nice little house.

[00:08:08]They had done a lot of work to it, but um it was designed for Franny and I wasn't that franny. So, I wanted to come in and, you know, make some changes and get all the carpet out. I wanted the hardwood floors to be polished up and, you know, refinished and just change the house around. But, I've been told before that when you make changes, you sometimes aggravate the spirits in the house. And it was kind of one of those things because I slept in what was Franny's bedroom and um it was funny the first night in that room I noticed there was a doorway from the bedroom that went into the hall and it had one of the little um metal latches on like you have on a screen door, you know, looks like shaped like a letter number seven. You just drop a little hole. I kept hearing the thing rattling and I finally kind of rolled over and looked and I thought I could see this thing moving up and down a little bit and it kept rattling rattling. After a little bit, it just popped. It was off of there. I thought, "Wait, what's going on here?" Then I see the door knob. It's like, "Oh, wait. The door opened." I said, "Oh, no. It's Freddy." And it really startled me for a minute. And then I thought, you know, I think it is must be Freddy. I couldn't figure out what else we could be going on there. It was a strange situation, but after that, that was a regular occurrence. I would hear that almost every night. Hear that lock jingling up and down, and it would finally pop open, and the door would open. After a while, I got some tape. I taped around that thing so it couldn't jiggle up and down and be opened anymore. But she'd hear it being messed with though and the doororknob turned but never would open it. I think she was probably aggravated with me over that. But it was a funny experience. I just thought that was kind of fun thing. The what was so funny in that whole thing though was Franny was a tremendous coffee drinker. She was known to drink at least three pots of coffee a day. I thought well maybe that's what ended her life. Maybe that was too much caffeine for her poor body. I don't know. But my mom came down to visit one night, one week actually. And one night when I was doing the ghost tour, she said, "Well, I'm going to go upstairs to my room and I'm going to I've got a new book. I'm going to just sit in bed and read all night." Okay, fine. I'll be back by 10:00, you know. But on the tour, I went by my house cuz I would talk about Freddy and what occurrences had happened there. And lo and behold, while I'm talking at the front of the bus, um I wasn't I couldn't see out the side to realize what was going on, but apparently my mother had gone down to the main floor of the house. She was in the front parlor and she walked in the front parlor by the front doors, which are big glass front doors and she had a cup of coffee on a plate in her hand.

[00:10:30]She's kind of slowly walks by and goes on around the corner and the people start screaming on the bus what they were hollering about. Said what's what's wrong? You know, we just saw her. We just saw her. She had a cup of coffee. It's like, "Oh my, I couldn't bear to tell them." I just started that, "Oh no, that's got to been my mother."

[00:10:48]It's just terrible. Anyway, I never did tell them. They got such a kick out of it. They were so excited. I felt bad if I had told them. But if they see this, they'll know then. But anyway, it was my mother, y'all. It wasn't really Freddy.

[00:11:01]I just thought that was so funny. I thought I'd pass that on to you. Lighten the mood a little bit before I let you go. But I'm going to have to let you go now. I've got sourdough bread rising and it's about time for me to take it and pop it in the oven. So, I'm running out of time, but I thought I wanted to send this little story to you. Like I said, after I found this poor lady's headstone, it just it's been on my mind and I thought, well, I'm going to talk about this subject for something a little bit different anyway and just to get in touch with y'all. But I wanted to thank you all too while I've got you here because um we have gotten um such great response from YouTube. I'm really excited about this. I'm having so much fun doing this and answering all the messages and response replies I get from everybody. But we've now gotten what they call is monetized, which shocks me.

[00:11:42]I would never thought about it. I'm just having fun doing it. But it's such a a great thing to have happen. I'm so excited because that'll mean the house will get done so much faster because you're all watching. It's really helping things out. I mean, I knew that could happen, but I thought, yeah, whatever.

[00:11:56]You know, I was just enjoying what I was doing. I never thought about actually somebody could actually make money doing this. I just, you know, I enjoy talking and telling people's stories. So, it just is a natural thing for me. But as it works out though, y'all can maybe really help them in big way with getting the house put together for me, which is great. And I appreciate that. You have no idea. It's a wonderful thing to have happen. I wanted to thank you all. I just wanted to let you all know. And again, please subscribe, click the bell, you know, that kind of thing. And uh please watch. I'll be back with another one probably on Saturday then. Anyway, thank you all. You have a good evening.

[00:12:30]All right. the night.