The Coffin Returned Home!!!

It's Canadian actor Charles Francis, In Texas, USA, in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan became ill and died whilst he was in Galveston. Because it was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, 3500 miles away, he was instead buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault. A year after his death, in September 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, killingt 6000 people, flooding the cemetary, shattering Charles Coghlan's granite vault. Some caskets were recovered and reinterred, while some were never found. That much is undisputed.

Charles Francis Coghlan Photo Wikipedia Commons

It's Canadian actor Charles Francis, born in Paris to English and Irish parents in 1841. Coghlan took to the stage in 1860 and became a well-regarded actor and playwrite especially noted for his Shakespearian roles. He came to the United States in 1876 and never left. While no stranger to Broadway, he travelled widely with theatrical troupes. In 1898, he produced a play called “The Royal Box” and took it on the road with himself as one of its stars. in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan became ill and died whilst he was in Galveston. Because it was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, 3500 miles away, he was instead buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault. A year after his death, in September 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, killing 6000 people, flooding the cemetary, shattering Charles Coghlan's granite vault. Some caskets were recovered and reinterred, while some were never found. When the Coghlan family were informed about the tragedy, they offered a huge reward to anyone who could find the coffin of Charles Coghlan, but no one came forward in the years that followed. In October 1908, eight years and one month after the Galveston hurricane, several fishermen on Prince Edward Island found a huge burial casket coated with barnacles floating to the shore of the island. According to the silver plate on the casket, it was the long-lost coffin of Charles Coghlan. The coffin had made a journey of several thousand miles from the Galveston cemetery to reach the birthplace of Charles Coghlan, just as the gypsy had foretold it would ten years before. It is one of the strangest true stories on record.

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