LEEDS – Hattie Lamb’s 19th-century headstone rests in the bowels of the basement at Leeds Central School.

It’s been there since 1975, when it appeared on the school lawn.

Different theories exist as to how it got there. Some think kids just pulled up the headstone and, not knowing what to do with it, discarded it on the school’s lawn, said Laurie Marston, who is part of an effort to return the stone to its rightful grave.

Hattie A. Lamb died Dec. 29, 1858, at the age of 6 years, 5 months, according to her nearly pristine headstone.

Back in ’75, janitor Frank McManus hauled the stone into the school and placed it in a storage room in the basement, Marston said.

Now she – along with Leeds Central School cook Tony Brogna, teacher Jen Hudner and cook Ginny Curtis – has been trying to put the headstone back where it belongs.

The group hopes to find out exactly where Lamb’s stone belongs and to have a small ceremony when they return it, Marston said.

“Everybody really wants to be there,” Marston said. “We just feel it’d be right for her to be acknowledged. I think we’re all getting attached to her.”

While looking for other information up at the state of Maine archives at the Maine State Library, she decided to check for Lamb’s death certificate. She caught a break.

Three times in a row.

The clerk helping her started skipping through microfilm before coming to a random stop. Right at Lamb’s certificate. He then started skipping through a card file before coming to a random stop. Right at Lamb. He then began flipping through the actual book of death certificates before coming to a random stop. Right at Lamb.

“It was just really bizarre,” Marston said.

The certificate did not show a cause of death, but it did reveal that Lamb was buried in the Lothrop Cemetery on Route 106, roughly a half-mile past the Littleborough Country Store.

But now Marston and her group have become stymied in their search to provide peace for Lamb. “We don’t know which spot” in the cemetery, Marston said.

The group’s next tactic may be to visit the cemetery and try to match up the headstone with one of the graves that lacks any kind of a stone. “That’s about the only way,” Marston said.

Hattie was the only child of Russell Lamb, a blacksmith, and Aphia Gould Lamb, who were married in 1840.

Their lost daughter’s headstone is inscribed with a verse: “Hattie is an angel now/A harp is in her hand/Now she is clothed in robes of light/Dwells in the spirit land.”

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