The mystery of Charlotte Taylor's kitchen bench gravestone solved

Mum and Dad renovators Gemma and Jamie Free discovered the gravestone hidden in the kitchen bench of their 1955 family home during a home makeover.

The Frees' did not know what to do with the gravestone so they put a call out to find the family of Charlotte Taylor.

Three months later, after reading about the gravestone discovery, Charlotte's family joined the dots on their family tree.

Launceston's Andrea O'Connor said Charlotte Taylor was her great-grandmother, and her mother Lois was the daughter of Charlotte's second-born child Reginald.

She said she did not know how Charlotte's original gravestone ended up in a kitchen bench in a 1950's home in Launceston.

"It's a mystery to us all how there is still a gravestone out there. We have no theories, and I haven't heard of anything."

Mrs O'Connor's cousin Julie Cooper (nee Taylor), whose father Rex was the son of Reginald, said anybody who was alive at the time, who might have known why or how, were now dead.

"There is no-one really left to ask anymore. My Dad, and everyone else, have all passed on."

Sleuths discovered that Charlotte, nee Parsons, married Charles Taylor, and together they lived near Deloraine, where the Taylor family owned and operated the old Bowerbank mill.

It was theorised that Charlotte's original 1934 gravestone, which would have been replaced with a new one when her husband died, may have ended up in Launceston after being repurposed by builders.

Meanwhile, Gemma Free said paperwork that was anonymously left in her letterbox showed that their 1955 house, where the gravestone was found, was originally built and owned by Joseph and Jessica Coley.

Mrs Cooper said she was not immediately sure that Charlotte Taylor was family but the documents and facts added up.

She said she grew up in the Bowerbank area, her father grew up in Exton, and many members of her family lived in the Meander Valley farming regions.

"Some of the names connected to Charlotte did sound familiar but there were a couple that weren't," Mrs Cooper said.

"My father's name was Rex Charles, my grandfather's name was Reginald Charles, the Charles name got handed down through middle names."

Mrs Cooper said the family would need to do a bit of extra research into how her great-grandmother's gravestone ended up in Launceston.

"It would be interesting to find out a bit more about how it got to the house."