Ancient Roman Headstone Found in New Orleans Yard Deposited by American Serviceman's Granddaughter

This old Roman tombstone just uncovered in a garden in New Orleans was evidently passed down and abandoned there by the female descendant of a military man who was deployed in Italy throughout the global conflict.

In statements that practically resolved an global archaeological puzzle, the granddaughter told regional news sources that her grandpa, Charles Paddock Jr, stored the 1,900-year-old item in a cabinet at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly district prior to his passing in 1986.

She explained she was not sure precisely how Paddock ended up with an item documented as absent from an Italian museum near Rome that had destroyed a large part of its holdings amid World War II attacks. Yet the soldier fought in Italy with the American military during the war, wed his spouse Adele there, and returned to New Orleans to work as a singing instructor, she recalled.

It happened regularly for military personnel who were in Europe in World War II to come home with souvenirs.

“I assumed it was simply a decorative piece,” O’Brien said. “I had no idea it was a 2,000-year-old … relic.”

In any event, what O’Brien initially thought was a plain marble tablet turned out to be inherited to her after her grandfather’s passing, and she put it as a garden decoration in the back yard of a home she acquired in the city’s Carrollton district in 2003. O’Brien forgot to retrieve the item with her when she sold the property in 2018 to a husband and wife who discovered the relic in March while cleaning up brush.

The husband and wife – researcher Daniella Santoro of the academic institution and her husband, her spouse – recognized the item had an writing in the Latin language. They consulted scholars who established the artifact was a grave marker memorializing a circa second-century Roman seafarer and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Moreover, the group discovered, the grave marker fit the description of one listed as lost from the city museum of the Italian city, near where it had originally been found, as an involved researcher – University of New Orleans expert the archaeologist – wrote in a column published online Monday.

The homeowners have since turned the headstone over to the authorities, and plans to send back the relic to the Civitavecchia museum are in progress so that institution can properly display it.

O’Brien, who resides in the New Orleans community of Metairie suburb, said she remembered her grandpa’s unusual artifact again after the archaeologist’s article had been reported from the international news media. She said she reached out to a news outlet after a conversation from her ex-husband, who shared that he had seen a news story about the artifact that her grandpa had once possessed – and that it actually turned out to be a artifact from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“It left us completely stunned,” she commented. “It’s just unbelievable how this came about.”

Dr. Gray, for his part, said it was a satisfaction to find out how the Roman sailor’s tombstone traveled near a home more than a great distance away from its original location.

“I expected we would compile a list of potential individuals connected to its journey,” Dr. Gray commented. “I never imagined we would locate the precise individual – thus, it’s thrilling to learn the full story.”