Bones and Skeletons
“Did you know that Halloween started because long ago people believed that one day a year at the end of the fall harvest, the spirits would return to walk the earth? On that day, people wore masks so the spirits wouldn’t recognize them.”
― Bexley’s Own R.L. Stine, from Zombie Town
What spirits may be lurking in the very streets and homes that, most days, envelop us in safety and security? Let’s find out, shall we?
One hundred and eighty four years ago, in 1839, local landowner Joseph Fray became the first “permanent resident” of a cemetery along what is now Stanwood Road, about a block south of Broad St. For the next forty years, the cemetery—known as St. Jacob’s Cemetery, the German Cemetery, the German Catholic Cemetery and the Frey Cemetery—became the resting place of more than 40 other known people with last names like Claus, Doersam, Frund, Haut, Kuhn, Schlitt, Schwartz, Waltar and Zimmer. Between 1906 and 1908, suspiciously close to the official founding of Bexley in 1908, the graveyard’s remains were moved to Mt. Calvary, which has since become a site of historical significance as the oldest surviving Catholic cemetery in Columbus. Mt. Calvary is visible from I-70 just west of 315.
One of the poor souls who may be out for restitution at the upsetting of her grave is Margaretha Klaus. She died in 1853, but when the occupants of Frey Cemetery were moved, she became the “mystery tombstone lady.” According to the Mount Calvary Cemetery book by C. L. Miller, “her stone was not moved with her remains and was later found in a yard on the east side of Columbus. Since then, Mount Calvary Cemetery has her monument, but her burial site cannot be located.”
In 1924, one of the homes on that consecrated, then deserted stretch of land on Stanwood was built by a Bess Davis. Did she know that less than two decades before, the site had been a graveyard? Do the current neighbors of that stretch of Stanwood know that it’s possible a rotten piece of wood or a chipped piece of marble dug up by an intrepid dog or pool installer could be part of a coffin or a tombstone?
Little did the Bone family (we’re serious. Bone family.) know when they bought 74 S. Stanwood Rd. that they moving into a creepy situation. Not only is their basement crawlspace topped with what once was burial grounds, but they soon discovered the truth. Claire Bone’s grandmother’s grandfather was John Frey, who buried his father, Joseph, on the plot that fateful fall day in 1839. Seems like it might not be so random that the Bones moved into the home. It’s as if something summoned them to live there.
Fast forward more than a century to just a couple of weeks ago, where a man in heavy boots is digging with great intention. He must break through. His tools strike and strike again until, slowly, pieces of the ground become unearthed.
But buried beneath the hard surface is not loose earth. Bits of wood emerge. Bits of metal. Unveiling the skeletal remains of a long-lost relic. Not, the man sighs, a coffin, but the track of a street car.
One of the streetcar’s rail ties dug up by grave robbers— I mean, construction workers—on Drexel Ave.
Buried under concrete for some 80 years, the tracks bring forth the ghosts of a different time, when the city of Columbus housed a network of streetcars. Before the electric models, there were horse drawn streetcars from 1863 to about 1980. Perhaps the Frey family used them. Then, until shortly after WW2, streetcars with electric wires overhead were the preferred public transit option. The line to Bexley traveled down Main St. Less known is that the streetcar turned up Drexel and turned around at Drexel Circle at Broad St. to make its round trip back to downtown. My grandmother, Elinor Vorys Matchneer, recalls taking the streetcar from Bexley to CSG, which at that time was on Parsons Ave. downtown. All the CSG girls would ride together and hang out at the student’s home closest to the stop when they got home.
From 1891, when the Main St. electric street car appeared, to 1947, the homes lining Drexel were in their own infancy as many were built in 1920. At the time of the streetcars’ decommissioning, they would have been fairly new, 20-some years old, depending, and the streets to the east were still being developed. This Drexel Ave. resident wonders if the streetcar was a real estate selling point or a downside.
They say on a still night, you can still hear the squeaking and squealing of streetcars rumbling past… Oh, wait, no, that’s just the never-ending construction.
