"He was lovely, he was fair..."

A Baltimore Sun article is here and is about a gravestone for a baby that died in 1848 that was found recently along a roadside. The article is titled "Brief life, knotty mystery" by Kristi Funderbunk.

The stone is described in the article by:

The marker includes, at its top, a carving of a bird. The engraving reads: "PAUL F., Son of J & S Kalar, Died May 28, 1848, aged 6 mos."

Below that information are the lines:

"He was lovely he was fair
And for awhile was given
An angel came and claimed his own
And bore him home to heaven"

Doris Hoffman, and several other researchers in the area, have taken on the task to try to find who Paul F. Kalar was, where he lived and where he was buried. It's definitely a labor of love. More power to them - I wish them well.

Why do people do this sort of thing? I think it is mainly the emotional feeling that that this stone marked the resting place of a child and it should be returned to its rightful place. There is also the curiosity factor and the intellectual challenge to solve the mystery.