James Lowell Trotter (1926-1926)

In my post, History of My Life by Emma Irene Facundus Trotter, Emma mentioned a grandson named James Lowell Trotter. James is the fifth son of Arnold DeWitt and Louisa Price Trotter. He is also my grandfather's brother.

I do not know a lot about James. The majority of what I know comes from his death certificate.

This record can be found here

James lived for 9 months and 28 days. He was born January 7th and died November 5th in Goshen, Utah in 1926. I am not sure what was determined to be his cause of death. This document also says he was buried in the Goshen City Cemetery.

A quick check of both Find-A-Grave and Billiongraves results in a headstone image for James.

Headstone in Goshen City Cemetery

So far the story seems very straight forward. As I was updating my legacy database I changed his burial place from Eureka, Utah to Goshen Utah. Sadly, in my early days of assembling my family history I did not source a lot of the information I entered into my database. When there isn't a source for the information, I make not of the entry but replace the entry with one that has a source.

I did a search in ancestry.com to find the find-a-grave index to link to James' profile page and came across an older entry. This page is for a J. Lowell Trotter who was born January 7th and had an unknown death date.

Headstone in Eureka Cemetery

A closer look at this headstone tells a story. It appears to be cemented into place by a large mound of cement. The area around the grave appears to be a field and not a groomed lawn. Right below the letters JAN you can see the top of the letters NOV. A look back at the headstone in Goshen reveals a more modern concrete headstone, not work that could have been done in 1926. The Eureka headstone appears to be the correct age for a headstone for James Lowell Trotter. It appears I have found two headstones for the same infant, born the same day who both died in November.

Why is this headstone in a field in Eureka, Utah?