‘She’s home’: Missing headstone returns on first grave at Bethel Cemetery – Kitsap Sun

Juleyan Williams' grave marker before restoration.(Photo: submitted photo)

PORT ORCHARD -- When Mick Hersey hoisted the skinny white marble slab onto a sandstone base under a canopy of Douglas Firs at Burley Cemetery Friday, it all but clicked together like a puzzle piece.

"She's home," Hersey said.

Therewas more work to be done. Hersey, a Bremerton resident known for his work restoring and preserving memorials around the Kitsap Peninsula and beyond, was set to drill holes and add an epoxy to make ensure this particular gravestone would last many more decades.

For reasons as mysterious as her death, the gravestone belonging to an Indiana woman named Juleyan Williams, who died just 37 in 1887, has been missing for some time from the 2-acre cemetery. The grave marker, whichhad been sheared off at its base, is believed to have been the first one there; she wasburied even before the cemetery was platted.

Mick Hersey sets the broken headstone of Juleyan Williams on its base at the Bethel Cemetery in Port Orchard on Friday, May 22, 2020. The broken stone was found at the Olalla cemetery and brought back to its rightful place through the research of Jen Taylor.(Photo: MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

"It had been gone for decades," said Jen Taylor, a 20-year member of nearby Grace Bible Church who has taken it upon herself to keep inventory and help restore the more than 200 plots inside.

Taylor's recently sleuthing online turned up a lead on where they might find the stone. In October 2019, in searching the Internet for the rather distinct spelling of Juleyan Williams, she came across a marker on findagrave.com that revealed its location leaning up against a cedar tree at the nearby Olalla Pioneer Cemetery. After getting permission from its caretakers, Hersey retrieved the slab to return it to its proper place.

Jen Taylor flips through a binder that lists the graves in Bethel Cemetery as she, son Will, husband Brian and Mick Hersey help restore the gravestone of Juleyan Williams, at right, in the cemetery on Friday, May 22, 2020. (Photo: MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

"We found it after thinking it was gone forever," Hersey said.

Church records show Williams was born Jan. 17, 1850 and died Sept. 15, 1887. Her gravestone says across the top: "Gone but not forgotten" and includes the sculpting ofa handshake to invoke her embrace with the divine in Heaven, Hersey said.

A portion of the stone is cut off, and it's unclear whether the rest has been jammed downward into its sandstone base over time. Hersey suspects the base itself was actually added later. In any event, the only thing that's clear is a sense of loneliness on the part of Williams, an Indiana native.

Jen Taylor points out Juleyan Williams's entry in a binder listing graves to Mick Hersey as they restore the headstone in the Bethel Cemetery in Port Orchard on Friday, May 22, 2020. (Photo: MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

Records of the grave include a short poem: "Farewell dear friends / I now must leave you / I am far away from my dear old home / I now lay on this hill alone."

Indeed, she was the first person buried there. Her own husband, Daniel, returned to Wabash, Indiana, remarried, and had another child, Taylor said she found in genealogical and census records.He died in 1907.All her five childrenleft Kitsap and went home, too.

Reporter Josh Farley can be reached at josh.farley@kitsapsun.com or (360) 792-9227. He loves a good history project, so feel free to email one to him.

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'She's home': Missing headstone returns on first grave at Bethel Cemetery - Kitsap Sun