“The Old Sexton’s Story”, from Where Silent Tents Are Spread

George Lee Willis, 1932

“The man who knew most and could tell most to one searching among the seven thousand mounds for history [at Grove Hill Cemetery], has himself passed on. He was Frederick Moesser, the remarkable personage who was sexton for the forty-four years from 1884 to 1928, and whose headstone shows that he died June 11, 1929, age ninety-six years.

In December 1883 the old sexton, Patrick O’Brien died and it became known that the board of trustees were hunting for a fitting incumbent for that very important office. An educated German, a little odd of speech, of dress, and in appearance, had recently moved into the county from Indiana. He sent in an application for the place, together with papers showing his experience in his home country, where, while a laborer among the priesthood of the church, with which he never affiliated, he nevertheless had received a rarely fine education. This was Mr. Moesser.

The Board of Trustees had him come before them, and among the first questions asked was his age. He told them that he was fifty-one years old. Several of the nine trustees who were themselves vigorous, active local citizens, in the prime of life, demurred a little to this and expressed the fear that he might be getting a little old for the large amount of hard labor that the sexton and his assistants had to perform. However, the objection to the applicant’s age was finally waived and he was employed. Long years after Mr. Moesser, if one were his intimate friend, would modestly, but smilingly tell of this incident; of how he had buried all nine of those directors, of how he had buried all nine of the trustees who succeeded them, of how he saw three of the nine who succeeded the second nine buried, and of how he himself after forty-four years in active service and at the age of ninety-five was then still laying out lots, surveying and performing all other duties of sexton, never quitting nor resigning until a year before his death; almost if not actually dying ‘with his harness on’.”