Bizarre story behind man’s grave in the middle of a sidewalk where kids play

A man’s gravesite has been sitting for decades in an unlikely place – on a sidewalk along a park where children play.

Thompson Williams’ grave has been etched in the sidewalk in a neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida, for decades.

The gravestone is right alongside a community center and tennis courts, and it is only recently that some of its story have come to light.

‘You dig up older maps and I came across an 1800s map of Jacksonville that had a zoomed-in map of ownership in the LaVilla area, and this was identified as the Mount Herman Cemetery,’ local historian and urban planner Ennis Davis told News4JAX this week.

Williams’ gravesite is likely there because that area of the historic neighborhood of Durkeeville was once a cemetery, according to Davis, who is co-founder of Community Planning Cooperative and Urban Planning.

‘This alone should let you know that the development of this street and its infrastructure was built over a cemetery, and they moved the grave in the middle of the sidewalk just to do it,’ he said.

An 1887 map of Jacksonville from the State Library and Archives of Florida depicts Durkeeville, with railroad tracks next to the ceremony merely feet away from where Williams’ grave remains.

Williams was shot dead in 1908 after protecting ‘the honor and life’ of a woman from a ‘fiend’ who fired at her twice, The Florida Times-Union reported.

He was buried in the cemetery that was mostly for black citizens.

‘This park is unique because it is Jacksonville’s largest 19th-century African American cemetery,’ Davis said.

The cemetery was owned by the family of Francis L’Engle, who was the first mayor of LaVilla. In the 1940s, they donated the cemetery to the city, which eventually removed many of the bodies and built the Emmett Reed Community Center over it.

While Williams’ grave has been left largely untouched – albeit awkwardly placed – what happened to those of many others is still a mystery.

That includes a plot for the Fagin family in the 1800s. Jacksonville native Freddie Paney, a descendant, told the TV station that the cemetery has been there since his childhood. Yet he’s skeptical he will ever be able to find where his ancestors were buried.

‘What they should do is put a big sign up and let people know that it was a cemetery,’ Paney said.

The city has not commented publicly on any efforts to uncover the lost graves.

Williams’ gravesite is not the only unusual object on a sidewalk that has drawn attention.

On the other end of the spectrum of strange, a rat-shaped hole in the sidewalk of a Chicago neighborhood went viral early this year and attracted so many tourists that it was eventually removed – and preserved.

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