LEWISTON – When Paul Bernard received the call – that the gravestone of a Spanish-American War veteran was found in a shed behind the former Gooseberry Barn in Auburn – his first response was a bit of the creeps.

“People shouldn’t own gravestones,” said Bernard, chairman of the L-A Veterans Council.

Then he began asking questions: Why was it there? Who did it belong to? Is there a veteran without his proper stone?

Bernard washed the slab of engraved, white marble, revealing the name, “Philiase Caron.” Then he began making calls.

He quickly found that St. Peter’s Cemetery in Auburn was the final resting place of a veteran by that name. A few calls later found Roger Caron.

“I got this call from a guy saying, ‘I may have some information about your family,’ ” Caron said. “I was flabbergasted.”

The man on the stone was his grandfather, though he knew little about the man.

“The information I got was pretty sparse,” he said. The elder Caron had died when Roger’s father was only 16.

Philias Caron had served in the 1st Maine Volunteer Infantry. When the war ended, he settled on Laurier Street in Lewiston, worked in a local mill and attended nearby Holy Family Church.

He died in 1934 and was buried in the family plot at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Lewiston. His grave is still marked by a small stone.

Bernard presented the stone to Roger Caron, who plans to erect it in a corner of his garden alongside a flagpole.

“It’s like he’s coming home again,” said Caron, who lives only a few blocks from the house where his grandfather lived.

And the mysterious questions? Some remain.

“I don’t know why the stone was made,” Caron said. He has a hunch, though.

The newly discovered stone spells his grandfather’s name as “Philiase.” The stone added an “e.”

“Maybe, it’s just because of the mistake on it,” Caron said.