I’ve wondered about this marker since the first time I found it – why would a man, clearly of some money to have such a nice grave slab, be buried in Cleveland if he was from the city of Chicago? Now that I have access to the Plain Dealer archives through my library card at home, I did some digging. Sea’s wife and her family were from Cleveland. In 1880, Sea married Nellie Seymour at her parents’ home in Cleveland. At the time, the local paper reported that Sea was with the firm of Field, Leiter, & Co. When he died in 1895, Sea was actually in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Sources:
“Personal Mention,” The Plain Dealer, 4/8/1880, pg. 4.
“Deaths,” The Plain Dealer, 4/6/1895, pg. 1.
This is a general comment, but I couldn’t open the About section comment box on your blog.
When I first came across your Grave Concern blog I was initially nonplussed. But looking over your various posts I see it’s a respectful and curious investigation.
My father used to take us wandering round graveyards – not as macabre as it may sound – always in daylight at sites of historical interest. The ones that stick in my mind include a (supposedly haunted) friary just outside Ballycastle in north Antrim on the north east coast of Ireland. Apart from the locals, there were graves of some German sailors or submariners from I think World War One. Exotic then I guess.
The graves of writers and campaigners can also be interesting to visit – to see how their celebrity or acclaim has waxed or waned since their interment.
Thank you very much. Since I was little, I have roamed around historical sites, and it’s only been as I aged that I realized how many of them had cemeteries and how much you could learn from them.