Stoneman Willie – Pennsylvania Mummy Identified
Written by Staff on October 14, 2023
Stoneman Willie. If you have to have a nickname, how choice is “Stoneman Willie”? I would take this name for myself; unfortunately, it’s been taken for 128 years. But soon, it will be retired in a very strange story out of Reading, Pennsylvania.
Stoneman Willie was a pickpocket with Irish roots. He was arrested doing Stoneman Willie stuff, which could’ve been anything but involved picking pockets, and he sat in jail. His kidney tried to make an escape and killed them both in the process.
So this is where the weirdness comes in. They send Willie to a funeral home for preparation, and since he was an unknown prisoner, they tried an experimental embalming technique on it. Like who’s gonna complain, right? Anyhoo, the process didn’t embalm him as much as it mummified him. So Stoneman William sort of got closer to being a “stone man.”
The funeral home, Auman’s, is still around today, and for the past 128 years, has held Stoneman Willie’s body in a casket with a red sash. How does he look? Not bad for 128 years old. Think Tutankhamen with a lousier diet. His hair and teeth are still intact, which is cool. Not sure if Auman’s brushed his hair or his teeth or merely dusted them.
One of the reasons the funeral home was allowed to keep the corpse of Stoneman Willie was because he was Stoneman Willie, and not a name that had family attached. But through the magic of enhanced records searching, they finally found a name for him: James Murphy. So they could bury him. But not without a shit-ton of fanfare. They had a 275th anniversary celebration shortly before his identity was revealed in which he was one of the guests of honor.
Stoneman Willie, a.k.a. James Murphy, was a beloved member of the city of Reading, and may he now rest in peace.
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