Skeletons Found in a Cedar Stump
Railway laborers clearing land near the coal mines uncover five human remains tucked inside the hollow of a massive ancient cedar.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Word was received yesterday at Mr. Donovan's office of a ghastly find by laborers on the Fairhaven Southern railway near the coal mines. While the graders were at work removing a large cedar stump, they discovered the skeletons of five human beings within its recesses. The skeletons were taken out and submitted to a physician, who pronounced them to be the bones of three white men and two women. There were no marks of violence discernible, and how they came to be in the place where they were found is a mystery. Incidentally, however, Mr. Donovan remarked that mammoth cedar stumps are found in that region, it being not uncommon to see them eight feet in diameter and some of them with cracks so large that two or three persons might crawl in to escape a storm.
“Mammoth cedar stumps are found in that region, it being not uncommon to see them eight feet in diameter and some of them with cracks so large that two or three persons might crawl in to escape a storm.”
The practice of clearing 'old growth' for development defined the landscape of early Bellingham. Today, the mystery of these five remains is a haunting reminder of the lives that inhabited the forest long before the railway grades and modern subdivisions were carved into the earth.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.