LIVE MAN’S TOMBSTONE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20958, 22 February 1930, Page 19

LIVE MAN’S TOMBSTONE.

VISITS HIS OWN “WIDOW.”

MAN WHO WAS THOUGHT DEAD,

A sensation has been caused throughout Nebraska, in the United States, by the mysterious reappearance in his native city of a 1 man who believed to have been dead a number of years, and to whose memory there stands a tombstone in the local cemetery. When Mr John F. Bar tells revisited Alma, where he was born in 1856, bis appearance in the main street caused a panic, for half a dozen of his old friends recognised him and fled from his path. At last one of them plucked up enough courage to approach him. "What on earth are you doing here?” he asked. "You arc supposed to be dead.” , "Why cm earth do you say that? ” said the equally astonished Mr Bartells. Well, I ought to know," replied the other, ms sense of humour momentarily overcoming his amazement, “ don’t you realise that I was one of your pallbearers?

You can see your headstone in the cemetery here. I will show it you.” When _ they reached the cemetery Mr Martells discovered that he had “died” ten years ago, for the inscription on the stone read: "John F.Bartells, 1856-1919.” ■According to a despatch from Alma the mystery of Mr Bartells’s " death" has now been partially cleared up, but he and the people of Alma still want to know who was buried in “his” grave. Mr Bertalls was _ married at Alma in ,1888. Husband an’d wife could not make a success of the union, and one day after a quarrel Mr Bartells. picked up his hat and coat and said good-bye for ever to his spouse leaving her in the possession of their farm. As she heard nothing from him she accordingly had him declared dead by the courts and Mr Bartells’a property passed legally into her possession.

But his wife still had some regard for her long-lost husband. When she read a description of a man found dead in Illinois which resembled that of her husband she set out to that State to identify the remains. She immediately declared that they were those of her. husband, and bad the body buried with the rest of bis lamily at Alma, Nebraska. U Bartells then went on to visit his "widow, but found Mrs Bartells curiously unimpressed. ti '‘Come back, have j-ou?" she said. Well, you can get on your way again.” He did not even get inside the door. He states that he will make no effort to live with the woman.