The Crawford County Sheriff’s Office and the Girard Public Library team up to solve the mystery of a child’s stolen headstone.

The headstone was discovered last week in the back of a stolen truck in Crawford County. The broken grave marker was that of an infant girl who was the daughter of a couple with the last name Johnson. The child died in 1873. The Crawford County Sheriff’s Office set out to find any information on the family so the headstone could be returned to the grave. Librarians at the Girard Library went to work and quickly determined that the parents of the child were Reverend Jonas M. and Martha Emerick Johnson. The Johnsons were a pioneer family that settled in southeast Kansas in 1867 and raised fourteen children, five of whom died as infants. The researchers believe the infant was originally interred in Walnut Cemetery, located about 10 miles east of Erie. Another of the couple’s children, George, is buried there, and they believe the two may have been placed in the same plot.

The Crawford County Sheriff’s Department says the headstone will be returned to the cemetery once the poison ivy near the gravesite goes dormant. The headstone will soon be returned to its rightful place, bringing a quiet measure of dignity to a child lost long ago.