For years there stood in the cemetery a broken tombstone, and its loneliness made it conspicuous. The top of the stone, through some unknown cause, had been broken off and in the lapse of years had been lost. On the remaining portion of the stone remained the inscription: "Third Miss. Batt. Resident Osyka, Miss. Died Jan. 16, 1865. Aged 37 yrs. Erected by his wife." The lost portion evidently contained the husband's name. The stone was broken long before the decoration services caused the briers to be torn away and flowers placed thereon. The story of these exercises reached the Southland, and a Union soldier placed there a box of flowers which came with the request that they be strewn over this unknown grave. Y. A. Smith, who had been a bugler in the Second Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, was present at the exercises in 1898, and when he learned the story of the broken stone said he would replace it if the name of the Confederate buried there could be ascertained. Eventually word reached a far-away home in Mississippi, and in due time a letter came containing a strip of muslin yellow with age, on which was an impression of the face of the broken stone as it was when originally put up. The impression showed the words and their alignment, as follows:

The stone was broken through the line "Ordanance Sergt."

Smith made good his promise, and when the graves were decorated in 1899, there stood a marble slab and the name of the dead soldier was a mystery no longer.