SEVENTY-TWO YEARS AGO, A NAMELESS INFANT GIRL DIED. SHE WAS BURIED IN A TINY WHITE COFFIN AT THE EDGE OF A RAVINE AFTER ARRIVING AT THE UNDERTAKER'S IN THE MAIL
By JOHN OLIVER Special to the Albany Times Union, 11/19/1994
In Albany's Graceland Cemetery, an American flag snaps in the wind.
Around its base, in a circular formation, stand the headstones of Spanish-American War veterans. Families are next, then small children alone.
Apart from all of them, at the edge of a ravine, is the tiny white marker at the grave of an infant, Parcella Post.
In March, I came to Graceland Cemetery looking for long-lost Scots Presbyterian relatives, suspect in the eyes of my Anglo-Irish mother because of their religion.
My family is typical of thousands in America. We know little about our mostly poor ancestors who lived out ordinary lives here as immigrants. I wanted to see where mine were buried, to establish a connection, however slim.
Walking away from the Olivers, John MacGowan, Margaret Russell and Jeanette, I stumbled over the grave of a stranger at Number 11 in Section 1 of Range 3. I'm not a journalist or an investigator, but I was soon driven to hunt for the stranger's history because the presence of her small tombstone disturbs this polite burying ground.
I came to feel I owed it to this baby to find out what happened.
The headstones in Graceland speak gently of their charges: “Beloved Mother,'' “Darling Husband,'' “Devoted Child,'' “At Peace.'' They tell of long lives, or of people who died young, before antibiotics, or men killed on foreign fields. One marker, into which six names are carved, commemorates an entire family that died on the same day.
But Parcella Post's tiny slab, which looks as though it should have fallen into the ravine long ago, is stranger still.
“Parcella Post, an infant whose unknown parents sent the little body by mail to an Albany undertaker Nov. 20, 1922. Buried here through the kindness of individuals Nov. 27, 1922.''
Surely, the baby's mother delivered at home, and the child died within days. I imagined the desperately poor parents, who for all the world wanted a proper burial for their daughter but had nowhere to turn, so they did the next best thing.
At first, I couldn't believe what Marty Bannan was saying: “Murdered, I think a pillow over the face.'' Bannan, executive director of the Albany County Historical Society, knew of the case, but couldn't say if the murderers were ever caught.
The head of the Albany Police Department's records section, Det. Lt. Jack Nielsen, first saw Parcella's headstone when he was a boy.
“We lived near that cemetery and I remember passing through it on the way to the woods to play,'' he told me. Sincere, low-key and insightful, Nielsen would make an appealing character on a cop procedural TV series.
He argued that someone must have had affection for the little baby. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to risk exposure by mailing the body, no reason to want her to have a proper burial,'' he said.
“Somebody loved her.''
Nielsen assured me he would produce the 72-year-old homicide records. In the meantime, I called the New York State Library, Graceland Cemetery's business office, the State Police, the Postal Service, criminal pathologists, medical investigators and the FBI.
I discovered that on a sunny, mild Saturday afternoon, Nov. 20, 1922, a dark-haired girl of about 16 walked into Albany Postal Substation 23 at 119 Madison Avenue, in a neighborhood so packed with Italian immigrants the Italian government maintained a fully-staffed consulate there.
The girl waited in line, holding a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Once at the counter, the desk clerk, 71-year-old Generi Pisari, told her the package had too much postage.
He smiled at the girl, whose head barely reached the counter, and said it showed real generosity to Uncle Sam to put so many stamps on a small box only going a couple of streets over.
“Why don't you just walk it there yourself?'' he asked, but the girl was resolute. “It's just laundry and I'm in a hurry,'' she said. Within minutes, a mailman had walked it to 38 Grand St, the residence and place of business of AB Kiernan, Undertaker.
When August Kiernan and his wife got home from the theater that afternoon, they found the box waiting. Mrs Kiernan, who was collecting items for a charity auction, opened the package, declaring, “August, look, another donation for the bazaar!''
In it was a $5 bill on a pile of crumpled newspapers. Wading through the paper, she thought someone had sent a doll to be auctioned. Then she realized she was staring at the naked and lifeless body of a baby.
Kiernan called City Coroner John Mullen, who summoned a medical doctor. The 8-pound baby girl, he concluded, was born healthy and, within three days, was smothered to death.
“Infanticide by asphyxiation,'' was his ruling. Questioned on November 21, Pisari, the postmaster, remembered nothing of the mailing, but would soon recall urging the sender to deliver it. He wasn't sure, however, if he'd spoken to a boy or a girl.
Authorities checked hospitals and interviewed postal workers. On November 22, the Times Union quoted residents of the area around substation 23 who had seen the girl in the post office. They stated unequivocally she wasn't from their neighborhood.
The next day, as if in response, the newspaper said Coroner Mullen was “Of the firm belief that the crime was committed in the immediate neighborhood in which the package was mailed”.
Neither that article, nor subsequent ones, suggests what was behind his certainty.
Writing of the as yet unnamed infant, the paper reported that at Kiernan's undertaking parlor, “The tenderest treatment is being afforded this tiny atom of humanity, and its little body reposes in a tiny white casket especially made by Mr. Kiernan and the wee form is clothed in immaculate white, which Mrs Kiernan made with her own hands for this forsaken and cruelly murdered baby”.
Kiernan put four miniature silver handles and a silver plate, engraved “At Rest,'' on the coffin. The body was buried in Graceland on November 27. Mullen named the baby for the manner in which her body was sent to the undertaker - parcel post.
By last summer, my investigation had stalled. I was getting nowhere, the Albany police weren't returning my calls and all I had to show for several months' work were old newspaper clippings. I had other, more pressing matters - a demanding job and a wife seven months' pregnant with our third child.
Then, in August, two pieces of information surfaced, the first concerning a visit.
Suddenly, fully 43 years after her death, on Memorial Day in 1965, a man in a red Chrysler Imperial convertible with New York plates 7466AB, drove into Graceland and placed a wreath at the grave.
A typewritten note of the visit was placed in Parcella's file at Graceland, but Manager Alden Merrick can't explain why. After more than four decades, cemetery workers wouldn't have remembered the case. (The plate isn't a lead, by the way. The state has changed the format of licenses three times since 1965.)
The other nagging part of the story concerns police files: there aren't any. The Albany police found nothing.When h e told me his search of the county Hall of Records, the coroner's office and police files failed to turn up even one piece of paper on Parcella's case, Jack Nielsen said: “Hey, it's Albany, what can I say...".
In 1922, Americans heard their first radio commercials, saw their first balloon tires and were enthralled by news from Egypt of the discovery of Tutankhamen's gold-laden tomb.
And in Albany, a little baby was born, then murdered, then given a name that is sad and funny at the same time. She lies in a donated grave at the edge of a ravine and her killer was never found.
In September, I went back to Number 11 in Section 1 of Range 3, after I had a word with John MacGowan and Margaret Russell and Jeanette. I cleared away the weeds on Parcella's marker and left fresh flowers. I found myself worrying that the coming winter will, at last, cause the little stone to tumble into the ravine.
Standing alone in Graceland Cemetery, I stared for a long moment at her grave. Then I walked to my car and drove home to play with my children, including my newborn daughter.
Her name is Mary.
John Oliver, an Albany native who drove a Hedrick beer truck for three years in the 1970s, lives in Sleepy Hollow, NY, and is a communications executive for First Fidelity Bank. He wrote this for The Times-Union.