I apologize if you came here on Friday expecting to see Erasmus Anderson’s next letter, but I have been distracted.  Erasmus will get his turn next Monday.

Mattie and Tom Stout just won’t let me alone.  I keep finding more information on them.

After I put yesterday’s articles to bed, I discovered on Find-a-Grave that Tom owned a large number of gravesites in the Sheridan Municipal Cemetery (which would have been the Mt. Hope Cemetery in Tom’s day.)

Here’s what I learned in my virtual visit to the cemetery:

• Mattie died on November 30, 1923
• Tom died on February 1, 1926
• Their son Clarence died tragically in an automobile accident in 1919 (at age 27).
• Since that is about the year that Mattie “disappears”, I can’t help wondering if she had a nervous breakdown and was sent away somewhere.
• Tom had a grandchild who was his namesake–Thomas Albert “Bert” Stout, born in 1920 to Harry O. and Lourena Stout.  Bert served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.