Weak, feverish, hours from death, young state Sen. William A. Jeffreys begged his family not to bury him in the cold, wet clay.
He pleaded from his sickbed for a sturdy grave, a resting place carved inside a 20-foot boulder on his family's Franklin County farm, safe harbor from worms.
Jeffreys got his wish. And in 1846, almost a year past his death at 28, a Scottish sculptor finished chiseling out his rocky crypt.
For more than a century, the legislator's grave drew curious climbers and even vandals who broke the marble grave stone at the boulder's peak. A state historic marker led them there, posted on U.S. 401, bearing an irresistible title:
Unique Tomb.
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