Macabre Memorials - Killed By A Tree

Some days we set out for a single adventure. On this day, we happened to have a few things we were seeking, one of which turned into a bit of a “treasure” hunt, or to be more direct, a “grave memorial” hunt.

There is next to no information on the web about the death of Isaac Nelson. In fact, it seems that the very spot he died is a bit of a mystery as to why they marked it. Why, in the middle of a forest, where a tree struck him dead, would they want to mark this as a memorial? People die everyday in odd circumstances and we don’t always mark the location. We simply follow their wishes and bury them. By now, you know we can’t just read about a story like this, we must see the marker for ourselves.

The path we started on was on the side of a parking lot shared by several businesses. It definitely seemed like a strange place to begin our search. However, the path seemed to be pretty well traveled, and we pushed on until we came to the general area to begin our search for the grave marker. We had very little to go on, just a few general clues. This is where it gets interesting for us. Most people would probably search together but not us. We are very competitive, in a fun way, and went our separate ways to see who could find it first. We did know it was small so keep in mind, living in the “granite state” made many rocks look like they could be the marker. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I found it, only to hear Dave eventually yell, “I found it!” 

Now, I don’t want to make us sound insensitive by using this poor mans demise into our treasure hunt. We always take a moment to think about the tragedy and the person who lost their life. We cleared the leaves covering around the stone and read “This stone is erected in memory of Mr. Isaac Nelson who received a mortal wound on this spot by the fall of a tree on the 28th of Dec. 1812 in the 58th year of his age.”

After finding this memorial marker, I found myself thinking about how interesting it would be if I were to be memorialized in the middle of nowhere. How cool would that be to have a hiker just stumble across my marker? Something to make them stop, look, and hopefully give some thought to who I might have been. Then maybe they would have a cool story to tell someone as I just did for Mr. Isaac Nelson.

* Credit to the OTIS website for covering the existence of this stone, and giving clues to its location:
http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2017/01/i-died-here-isaac-nelson-death-marker.html