The Wurtemburg Mystery Grave

If you've spent a lot of time exploring cemeteries, you've probably stumbled across an occasional gravemarker located outside the perimeter of the graveyard. These "outsider" graves have always captured my imagination, as there are dozens of interesting possibilities as to why the deceased was not laid to rest within the boundaries of the burial ground. Was the deceased an evil, malevolent human being who had been deemed unworthy of eternal slumber in consecrated soil? A suicide? An outcast, pauper or social pariah?

In the early part of the 20th century, one such grave existed outside a tiny cemetery in Lawrence County. As is so often the case, the explanation is more logical than you might have imagined. The following story comes from the September 27, 1911 edition of the New Castle News.