Mummified Pennsylvania man identified and buried after 128 years on display
READING, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - A leatherskinned mummified man lying in an open coffin in Reading, Pennsylvania, known only as “Stoneman Willie” to the public got two things Saturday he went without for 128 years - a burial and his real name.
Dressed in a period tuxedo, his generationslong public afterlife as the stuff of city lore and ghost stories ended when he was introduced to the world as James Murphy of New York at a funeral in Reading.
A group of funeral home employees and well-wishers, said in unison, “Rest in peace, James,” as they unveiled his tombstone, with his real name in small letters below large type reading, “Stoneman Willie.”
His send-off included a colorful procession with a motorcycle hearse carrying his casket.
Murphy was of Irish descent, an alcoholic, and was in Reading at a firefighters’ convention when he died in the local jailhouse of kidney failure on Nov. 19, 1895, said Kyle
Blankenbiller, the director of the Theo C. Auman Inc. Funeral Home where Murphy’s remains had resided.
Blankenbiller said at the funeral that Murphy’s real name was known to the original Theo Auman, director of the funeral home in 1895. Murphy’s real name had been passed down within the funeral home over the past 128 years, but it was not until the latest decision to give him a proper burial that the research was done to conclusively
confirm his identity as James Murphy.
The once unidentified man was in jail accused of being a thief, and he was accidentally mummified by a mortician experimenting with new embalming techniques.
Local officials were unable to locate relatives, said local historian George Meiser.
“Weeks passed, months passed, years passed and no one claimed the remains,” Meiser said at the service.