The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1920-04-29
G. Amiel Umberham, of Green Bay, Comes to
KenOsha to Clear Up the Mystery
Of His Fathers Death.
NOTHING BUT DOUBTS HERE
Visitor Comes in Hopes of Finding His Fathers Body
to Take It from Potters Field to Bury
1t in Family Burial Ground

Hansen morgue and buried that night
in the Green Ridge cemetery.
Overalls Destroy Clue.
Umberham on Tuesday night sought
to get into communication with every
person who had helped in rescuing
and burying the body more than Ave
years ago. He knew that his father
was dressed in his uniform as an Off
GER Of the Coast Guard, and if he had
any overalls on over these they would
surely have been washed away by the
waves before the heavier clothing.
This, coupled with the fact that few
persons who had anything to do with
the corpse, while they could make lit
tie description Of it, were certain that
the man could not have been more
than five and half feet tall, conyinc-
ed Umberham that it could not have
been the body Of hts father.
Recalls Famous Papan Funeral.
In investigating the case, Umberham
uncovered again The Papan mystery
which conferred around the finding Of
a badly decomposed body in the Keno
sha harbor ON the morning Of July
GGsh, t95 b Y5u Deneau ner3-
Ter 2tos.e q ca .
This body was also in a very bad state
of putrefaction and was so decomposed
that it was ordered buried immediate
ly. Still clinging to it, according to
accounts carried of the incident in
the Kenosha Evening News, for that
day, was. the portion Of blue shirt
and a piece of the stripped trousers
he had worn. The eyes had fallen
from the sockets and the flesh had
so wasted away that it was impossible
to tell anything about the age of the
victim.
Captain Fountain declared that he
believed that the man was between 40
and As years of age while undertakers
in charge of the body were of the
opinion that he was much younger
man. In the pockets were found two
whistles, jack knife and few trim
kets. The body was buried that morn
ing in lot in the Green Ridge Gene
terry.
Buried as Joseph Papan.
That evening, Andrew Papan, =
brother of Joseph Papan, who had mys-
teriousIy disappeared from Kenosha
lsix weeks before, came to the Crossin
morgue where the body had been pre-
pared for burial and identified the
trinkets as those of his brother. At
his direction the body was exhumed
and given Christian burial and laid
to rest in the family plot in the st.
George cemetery. That was on July
81 1914.
Three years later Joseph Papan was
found working in a tannery in San
Francisco and mystery again enveloped
the identity of the body which had
been buSed as his in the st. George
cemetery.
Umberham is convinced that this
body could not have been that of his
father, since every indication seems to
show that the man was much younger
than his father had been.
Leaves Mysteries UnsOlyed.
Umberham's visit to Kenosha on
Tuesday did not help to solve any
of these three mysteries of Lake
Michigan except that he left this city
late Tuesday evening convinced that
his fathers body was not buried in
a nameless grave in a Kenosha ceme-
terry. He is now confirmed in his belief
that the lake has held its dead and
thas his father lies buried somewhere
beneath the waves of Lake Mich1ean.