Fifteen people Thursday witnessed the end of Pap and Molly’s long and storied journey to the grave.
The mummies, discovered last month in a defunct Ensley funeral home a half century after they were attractions there, were laid to rest at noon at Lakeview Cemetery on Highway 269 in Edgewater. Scott-McPherson Funeral Home donated its services to lead the short and respectful service.
“We stand over the gravesite of this couple, whose names we do not know,” the Rev. Jonathan McPherson said. “We realize that they had a mother and a father and were loved.”
About half of the attendees were from the funeral home or its associated church, St. John Baptist Church in Edgewater. Others were neighbors who just wanted to be there so that someone would remember the two souls.
“Closure,” Paulette Lille said. “I think it’s closure. To give them respect, they needed a burial. They don’t have any family.”
Some of the attendees had long been curious about the two mummies, remembering a time when people lined up to see them.
“I had heard a lot of talk about these people for years. My mother and father used to talk about them,” said Carrie Body, 78. “I was afraid to pass that funeral home because they would tell us there were people in there.”
During the service, Teresa Baker sang the hymn “Blessed Assurance,” and others read from the Bible.
The scene of the burial was a hillside in the woods, made muddy by the sprinkling rain, that is dotted with graves from as far back as the 1850s. Gravedigger Donald Butler said U.S. Steel donated the land to McPherson’s church. He has been working to clear and restore the area for several years.
For now, a wooden stake marks the grave until a tombstone can be engraved.
Members of one family in Birmingham says they know the names that should be inscribed there.
Jane Norman, who was born in the early 1940s, said her mother took her to see the mummies when she was a little girl. The man had a mustache and a cloth around his hips and a little bit of hair, she said. And the funeral director told them names: Richard Cloud and Molly Fleming.
“They said nobody came to get them after they got them ready to bury,” Norman said.
Records show that a Richard Cloud died in Jefferson County in 1926. There is no record of a Molly Fleming, although there were several Mary Flemings living here around that time. More research is necessary to determine if those names could be attached to the bodies.
“They were together in life, they were together in death,” he said.