It’s curious how interesting a bit of extra marble on a tombstone can make a story.

Headstones themselves can be interesting: among the waist-high markers there might be a family monument in concrete shaped like a tree; or there might be some interesting or familiar names, or there are remarkable dates. These little scraps of information let we the living imagine who these gone before us might have been.

This marker, for instance:
Walter L.Manlove
1883 1915
Gussie Audrey
His Wife
1887 19—

That incomplete date, that little block of extra stone, makes us wonder: What’s the story here with Walter Manlove’s wife?

There is a story here, uncovered en masse through some excellent detective work.

But even though we’ve found Miss Gussie, there’s still some imagining to be done around her story.

Author guidance for This story

In a relatively recent Vlogbrothers video, John Green ponders a particular tombstone in a small town's cemetery in Indiana (the video in question is here, but the important thing to know is that he asks "What's the deal with Walter Manlove's wife?" {at 1:11, if you're interested}).

Given the curious nature of the nerdfighter community, his question didn't stay rhetorical. Folks wanted to find out who this Gussie Manlove was.

So they did.

The summary of the uncovered story is here, more details and citations are here, and research further into the story is going on here... but even with all this information, there are certain things censuses, news clippings, and databases can't archive.

This is my attempt to imagine those unarchivable things.

updated Apr 8 '11 by g2LaPianistaIrlandesa