Amputated Hand Rests in Family Cemetery
In 1976, the Hagerstown Daily Mail profiled a ruined historic house, originally an 18 th century stone tavern, in the Washington County community of Huyett (pronounced "Hewitt"), a.k.a. Huyetts Crossroads. The most interesting thing about the property – “disclosed with much secrecy,” the reporter coyly noted – was mentioned only in the last sentence of the article: The amputated hand of one of the past residents lies buried in the family graveyard. That’s all I know; the rest is speculation. I don’t even know whether the house still exists, on the north side of Alternate U.S. 40 just west of Maryland Route 63. Its family graveyard is listed, however, on the Find a Grave website, which documents 16 burials there. Of the adults buried in the cemetery, only one, Jacob H. Myers (1828-1909), would have been of fighting age during the Civil War. If Jacob lost a hand on the battlefield, preserving it for home burial would have been odd but not unheard-of, as any Civil War...