scenes

Introduction | Where is Liberty Township? | Township-Scale Map | Scenes Related to the Murder

Photos of Sites Related to the Murder

On Tuesday, June 25, 1872, Mary Secaur's remains "were taken to the Liberty Chapel Church yard, and in the presence of a large concourse of people and her sorrowing friends, were entombed close by the grave of her mother" (Day).

Mary's gravestone is pictured at left. Her mother's gravestone is nowhere to be scene in the small graveyard next to the now-empty church building. The white limestone of Mary's tomb is faded and worn to the point where very little of the inscription, save her name and dates, is legible. It's just another of many old, forgotten graves in an out-of-the way graveyard on a back road in rural Ohio.

The church, pictured at right, is empty. This is probably not the same building that stood on the site in 1872.

Strouse May's house stood along the road between Liberty Chapel and the murder site. As near as I can tell, this house stands on the site. It is also of sufficient age to at least contemporaneous with May's house, if not the actual house. I like to believe that it is the house, and I like to think of Mary happily visiting her grandparents, even staying the night in the wood-frame building.