Grave of Sarah Ware

In September of 1898, 52-year-old divorcee Sarah Ware was walking home from a friend’s house when she disappeared. Two weeks later her body was found decomposing in a field, her head bashed in and almost completely severed from her body.

Investigators eventually found a bloody tarp and hammer that seemed to be connected to the murder. The implements belonged to a store owner named William T. Treworgy. That plus the testimony of a man named Joe Fogg who claimed to have been paid by Treworgy to move Ware’s body was enough to send him to trial…where he was acquitted when the witness recanted his testimony and, some say, the murder weapon was lost. Nothing further came of the case. They buried the body, but, like the investigation itself, that also went awry.

Ware’s final resting is Oak Hill Cemetery in Bucksport. Ware was buried without her head, the skull of which remained in evidence lock-up for 100 years before finally being buried near that headstone, supposedly reunited with her body. However, there seems to be some uncertainty about whether her headless corpse was actually interred in the spot marked by her headstone or was moved somewhere else by her family.

Her headstone can be found in the Ware family plot at the back of the cemetery. 

Adapted with permission from The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker