SOUTH SOLON — A plain, uncut slab of fieldstone marks a grave in the 1835 South Solon Burial Ground.

There’s no date on it and no name. An inscription etched into the stone reads, “Mr. Tramp name unknown.”

Mimosa Mack washes the headstone of Mr. Tramp at the South Solon Burial Ground on Wednesday. Photos by Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel

A simple fieldstone marks the final resting place of Mr. Tramp. No records of the burial have been found.

That’s it.

There is no record of the man or the burial or who owned the plot in Solon Town Office records or in books at the Solon Historical Society. Nobody knows who he was, where he came from, when he was buried or how he died.

It’s a mystery, said Solon Town Historian Lois Starbird. And it’s intrigued locals in this Somerset County town of just more than 1,000. The stone has been there for as long as anyone can remember.

“He must have been a man who died here in town, and they didn’t know what his name was so they buried him under that name – Mr. Tramp,” Starbird, 87, said at the Solon History House, the former residence of Virginia Merrill, who donated her home to the historical society upon her death.

FLORAL TRIBUTES

There’s no reference to the person known only as Mr. Tramp anywhere in historical society books, including “Sketches From Solon’s History,” published during the town’s sesquicentennial in 1959.

“Tramp” was a word used to describe a homeless person who wandered or “tramped” around the countryside on foot looking for work or handouts.

“It was a long time ago, but I don’t know how long,” Starbird said. “It is a mystery who he was, certainly. He must not have had relatives somewhere, and he just disappeared off the face of the earth as far as anybody knows.”

Sonny McCarty, 71, who used to keep the grounds mowed at the cemetery, as did his parents before him, said the grave has been there for as long as anyone can remember.

“No one seems to know who it was. That’s why they put Mr. Tramp. No one ever knew what the name was,” McCarty said. “My neighbor used to put some flowers on there every year, but no one knows what the whole story is. She cared. Her husband’s buried up there. She’s unable now, but she used to put flowers on there, just neighborly, a good Samaritan.”

The neighbor, Annie Cooley York, now nearly 90 years old, said she stopped going up to the burial ground years ago when it became difficult for her to get around. She said she hasn’t put flowers there for years.

Yet, on Wednesday afternoon, as the clouds broke from an early morning rain, three sets of fabric and plastic flowers could be seen stuck in the ground at the top of the stone. No one knows who put them there.

‘SORT OF SWEET’

Mimosa Mack, 47, and Amanda Slamm, 49, sisters who grew up on South Solon Road near the cemetery, said they would visit the graveyard as kids on adventurous outings with friends. The sisters found that grave again in early June when they and other family members interred the ashes of their father, Roy Slamm, whose marker is in the new part of the cemetery right across from Mr. Tramp.

They remembered the mysterious Mr. Tramp’s grave and always wondered who he was and how he came to be buried next to the grassy roadway in what appears to be the old side of the cemetery.

“I remember the mystery of it, wondering who it was. Exploring the cemetery and seeing the name was cool,” Mack, now of Skowhegan, said Wednesday at the grave site, which lies in front of twin stumps and new-growth shoots of a cherry tree.

Slamm, of Solon, said they always imagined who the tramp could have been and how he came to be buried on South Solon Road. She said she always thought it was nice that the town – or somebody – took it upon themselves to give the man a decent burial.

“I just remember it was sort of sweet that the local community buried an indigent person and gave him a stone,” she said. “That stranger was taken care of, even though he was a stranger.”

Mack said what makes the mystery even greater is that the marker is a simple piece of fieldstone placed on top of the ground, where it still sits.

“It’s a stone itself. It’s not a cut stone or a polished stone at all,” she said. “It’s a rough stone with the name carved into it.”

Mr. Tramp’s grave is bordered by weathered gravestones dating to the mid- to late-1800s. Family names on nearby stones include Raymond, Hunnewell and Davis.

Solon Selectwoman Sarah Davis agreed that the Mr. Tramp gravestone has been in place as long as she can remember. She said there is no record of the burial or who the person was.

“It would have been up to the people at the time to make a record,” she said. “If it wasn’t done then, it certainly couldn’t be reconstructed later by us. I can’t explain why there wasn’t a record made of it at the time.”

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