01/21/2026
Three little siblings have been buried in a plot at the northern edge of our cemetery for more than a century and a half. They ranged in age from 31 days to three years, and they were lovingly memorialized by their family with a beautiful obelisk grave marker. But the children aren’t who we thought they were.
Each child’s information is listed on a different side of the marker, with the fourth side remaining blank. Our cemetery catalogue lists them as:
- Tuda, Violet V. (1865-1865)
- Tuda, Joseph H. (1866-1868)
- Tuda, C. S. (1869-1872)
I couldn’t find any information about the Tuda family. While Violet and Joseph lived and died between census years, the child listed as C. S. was alive during the 1870 census and should have been listed, along with the parents. But I couldn’t find anyone named Tuda at all. In fact, the ONLY records I could find of this family were our own cemetery records and the children’s memorials on the Find A Grave website.
But I noticed a couple of strange things. On Violet’s side of the marker, her name is shown as Violet V. On Joseph’s side, the name says Joseph H. But on the third side, it says, “Tuda C. S.” It didn’t seem likely that the parents would use a “first name, middle initial” format for the first two children, and then, for the last child, switch to a “last name, first initial, middle initial” format. Furthermore, the child identified as C. S. was the last to die, which means that if Tuda were the last name, the family’s last name didn’t appear on the grave marker at all until the third child died. I concluded that Tuda was the third child’s first name, and that Tuda had two middle names and thus two middle initials.
So who were they really? Solving this mystery required some actual digging, as opposed to the figurative “digging” I normally do through various archives. Using a thin scraper from our headstone cleaning kit, I started gently digging the dirt away from the base of the grave marker. On Violet’s side, I found a fancy design engraved below her age, which let me know that the grave marker had indeed sunk. On Joseph’s side, I found the answer I sought: Below what had previously appeared to be the bottom line of engraving, there were two more lines, indicating that these were the children of F. H. and L. J. Stahl.
Frederick Henry Stahl and his wife, Lor J. Stahl, lived in Lancha Plana, an area that is now under Camanche Reservoir. The census lists Frederick’s place of birth as Pennsylvania, but voter records indicate that he was from Maryland. Maryland is probably correct, since he most likely provided that information himself when registering to vote, whereas somebody else in his household may have provided his information to the census-taker. Lor was originally from Missouri.
The Stahls were living in the Neil Christopher household at the time of the 1870 census. Frederick was listed as a laborer (presumably on Neil’s farm), and Lor’s occupation was keeping house. The Stahls had a one-year-old daughter, Susan (the initial “S” in Tuda C. S.’s name, and the name by which she was called). By this time, the Stahls had already had, and lost, their first two children, Violet and Joseph.
Although these three Stahl children were born within just three years and three months of each other, none of them knew each other in life, Violet having died before Joseph was born, and then Joseph before Susan was born. Susan lived longer than the other two children, but died at the age of just three.
Yesterday, on Susan’s 157th birthday, her family’s actual identities were revealed and their names were updated in our catalogue. The Stahl children’s grave marker is being cleaned and reset, so that the bottom lines of engraving remain visible. I will share photos again once we have completed the work.
Megan Buchanan
Ione Public Cemetery
