A Giving Spirit Who Remains Unknown

 By Jennie Shurtleff

Woodstock has over two hundred volumes of property records, and most of these volumes list mundane transfers of land. However, every once in awhile, one comes across a record that is out of the ordinary. Such was the case when Woodstock’s Town Clerk, Charlie Degener, recently discovered some documents in the town’s records regarding the lease of a mummified body.

According to these documents, on August 28, 1937, a Woodstock resident named Frederick Wood had leased some mummified human remains to a man named Arthur Charon. Per paragraph 7 of this lease, Charon was to take out insurance on the remains. The first of the two documents in the town’s records, dated December 24, 1937, waived the requirement for insurance, and the following year, a separate record, dated November 25, 1938, terminated the loan agreement altogether.

So here’s the backstory on these odd entries in the town’s records.

Frederick Wood, listed as the owner of the remains in the property records, worked for a woman named Mrs. Harding, who was a local antiques dealer. When Fred Wood spotted some skeletal remains in the attic of a medical school professor in Middlebury, Vermont, he bought the skeleton thinking that Mrs. Harding might like to have it because she liked old things. Apparently, he was wrong in his assumption. Mrs. Harding didn’t embrace the idea of owning a skeleton, so for years the skeleton was kept in Fred Wood’s garage.

During those early years, many neighborhood children went to Fred Wood’s garage to see the skeleton, which was dubbed “Oswald.” The skeleton also made several public appearances including riding on a wrecker in the Alumni Day Parade and being in a booth at the Rotary Carnival where people would pay money to see it.

Painting of Fred Wood by William James. In addition to working for Mrs. Harding, Fred Wood was also a talented photographer.

The skeletal remains were eventually given to Woodstock Union High School, where they were kept in a wooden cupboard in Mr. Cullen’s science room. When studying the skeletal system, Mr. Cullen would open the cupboard and use the remains to show various bones and how they were connected.

Years passed, and people began questioning the propriety of displaying and using human remains in a biology class. Eventually, a group of concerned citizens got together and planned a burial for the remains and the erection of a marker. However, they were perplexed as to what to write on the marker. According to local lore, “Oswald” had been a soldier in the Mexican War; however, the veracity of that story or how the remains ended up in the attic of a medical school professor, were not conclusively known. So a cryptic inscription was written on the tombstone that reads:

“Here lies a giving spirit who remains unknown. ca 1880.”

Tombstone on the edge of Cushing Cemetery marking the site where the remains were buried.