Nancy Martin

AKA:

The Girl in the Barrel

Birth Name:

Nancy Adams Martin

Birth Date:

May 4, 1833

Birth Place:

Castine, Maine

Death Date:

May 25, 1857

Place of Death:

Cardenas, Cuba

Age:

Cause of Death:

Yellow Fever

Cemetery Name:

Oakdale Cemetery

Claim to Fame:

The Odd and the Interesting

Silas Martin was a successful sea captain and trader. The one thing he hated about his job was missing his family for long stretches of time. So when his son John and daughter Nancy (Nance to her friends) asked to accompany their father on his next voyage he did not hesitate to add them to the crew. When they set sail in early 1857, Nance took ill about three months into the trip. Silas detoured and sailed into Cardenas, Cuba in search of medical care but it was too late - Nancy succumbed shortly upon arrival. Rather than having Nancy buried on foreign soil or buried at sea, Captain Silas was determined to return to Wilmington for a proper burial with her family. The issue was how to keep the body preserved for the voyage home. They decided on a large rum barrel as a makeshift coffin filled with liquor to preserved the body. The thought of her body sloshing around in a cask during rough seas was too much for her father and brother, so it was decided that a chair would be placed in the cask, nailed in place and Nance seated and tied into the chair to keep her secure. Rather than disturbing the remains, upon returning to Wilmington, Silas had Nance buried in the cask in the port city’s Oakdale Cemetery.

The Rest of the Story

Earlier versions of this story claim that, on the return trip home, John was lost at sea, presumably washed overboard during a storm. However, more recent scholarship has suggested that John made it home to Wilmington with Nance’s body but was lost at sea during a later voyage on his own ship. Regardless of which is true, John was lost at sea, and his body was never recovered. His name was engraved on one side of the obelisk that also bears his parents’ and sister’s names at the family’s grave plot. Either way Captain Silas lost two children to the sea. It was said that when the Captain was home he visited her grave every day.

Some believe this is an urban legend, however cemetery records show Nancy was buried in the barrel. Furthermore in recent years ground-penetrating radar has shown the body beneath Nancy Martins memorial is not horizontal, but rather slumped over as if in a sitting position.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Oakdale Cemetery

520 N 15th Street

Wilmington, North Carolina, 28401

USA

North America

Map:

Map of Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina

Grave Location:

Section B, Lot 75

Grave Location Description

As you enter the cemetery take the first right and drive all the way around the perimeter of the cemetery. When you come to Section B on your left, stop at the second lot surrounded by a fence. Here lies the Martin family and their daughter, Nancy “Nance” Martin.

Grave Location GPS

34.24696881039717, -77.93139728668437

Visiting The Grave:

Photos:

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Videos Featuring Nancy Martin:

The Girl Buried in a Barrel of Rum - The tragic death of Nancy Martin

More Curious Tales: Nancy Adams Martin

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Friederike Hauffe

Eben Byers

popular name: Eben Byers

date_of_death: March 31, 1932

age: 51

cause_of_death: Cancer due to excessive radiation exposure

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Eben Byers, popular Pittsburgh sportsman, socialite and industrialist, fell out of an upper berth in 1927 returning from a Yale-Harvard football game and injured his arm. His Pittsburgh physiotherapist, Dr. Charles Clinton Moyar, prescribed a patented drink called ''Radithor." Radithor, a popular and expensive mixture of radium 226 and radium 228 in distilled water, was advertised as an effective treatment for over 150 "endocrinologic" diseases, especially lassitude and sexual impotence. Over 400 000 bottles, each containing over 2 μCi (74 kBq) of radium, were marketed and sold worldwide between 1925 and 1930. Byers was drinking in excess of 3-4 bottles a day for years, claiming the elixir eased the arm pain and gave him a little energy boost. He enthusiastically recommended it to friends, sent them cases of it, even gave some to one of his horses. but stopped in October 1930 (after taking some 1400 doses) when that effect faded. Soon after he lost weight, had horrible headaches and his teeth began to fall out. In 1931, the Federal Trade Commission asked him to testify about his experience, but he was too sick to travel, so the commission sent a lawyer to take his statement at his home; the lawyer reported that Byers's "whole upper jaw, excepting two front teeth and most of his lower jaw had been removed" and that "All the remaining bone tissue of his body was disintegrating, and holes were actually forming in his skull." The death of the Pittsburgh millionaire sportsman Eben M. Byers, who was an avid Radithor user, by radium poisoning in 1932 brought an end to this era and prompted the development of regulatory controls for all radiopharmaceuticals.