A gravestone that has been missing for nearly 150 years has been returned to the burial site of a Lansing pioneer.
Businessman Peter J. Weller died in 1849 at age 48, and was buried in the former Oak Park Cemetery. That cemetery closed in 1875, and his body was moved to the then-new Mt. Hope Cemetery. Somehow, his monument was lost.
Earlier this year, Weller’s gravestone turned up on an auction website. Loretta Stanaway of The Friends of Lansing’s Historic Cemeteries says the auctioneer agreed to pull the gravestone from the sale. This weekend, it was placed on Weller’s grave.
Stanaway calls it a heartwarming story, saying “everybody deserves to have some way of being remembered and recognized, and this gives him back his identity.” She said a preservationist has also restored monuments on the graves of two of Weller’s daughters and his daughter-in-law.
Stanaway added that preservationist Andrew Noland installed the gravestone this past weekend.
“He was able to put that monument back up on Mr. Weller’s grave where it belongs,” she concluded, “where it had been missing for 146 years, or 172 years since his death.”
The family plot contains ten graves. Some remain unmarked. A genealogist has researched the family and found no surviving family members.
