A Mystery is Unraveling

Sometime in October of 2018, I got an email from a professor at Duke University who told me that her great-grandfather had worked at MedChi for decades! Once she told me his name, Gustave O. Caution, I realized that he was the second full-time employee at what was then known as the Faculty. 

Marcia Noyes had hired him to be the "Man Friday" around the building, serving as porter, custodian, cloakroom attendent and general helper. Mr. Caution worked at the Faculty for 56 years, and his son Walter, joined him and stayed for several decades, as well. 

At some points, Mr. Gustave Caution's address is given as the address of the Faculty, and at other times, it is elsewhere in the city, but close to the Faculty. 

His grand-daughter was visiting Baltimore on another matter, and asked to come by and see where her ancestor had lived and worked. Of course, we were pleased to welcome her and show her around the building where Gustave had worked for decades. 

We found an old city directory which listed his home address, and drove to find that. We also found and visited the church where he and his family had been active for decades. 

However, one of the things that we couldn't find was where Gustave was buried. 

I am beginning to do some deep research on Marcia Crocker Noyes for a possible book, so I headed over to the Maryland Center for Culture and History (formerly the Maryland Historical Society), to search her files which were donated to them in the late 1990s. 

The Medical Library Association had done a highly-researched article on Marcia, who was one of its founders, in the 1980s. I came across a letter which was written to the Faculty, asking where Marcia was buried. Of course, we know the answer to that - it's Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. 

But what we didn't know was that both Gustave and Walter Caution were also buried on the same plot as Marcia, her sister Kitty, and their nephew.

At the bottom of the letter, in handwriting that is possibly Mike Murray's, is a listing of who is buried in the plot at Green Mount Cemetery. And that's where we learned that Gustave and Walter were both buried there. Gustave died in Baltimore in 1961 at age 88 years old. He started working at the Faculty in 1897, just a year after Marcia was hired and when it was still located on Hamilton Place, Eutaw Street. 

The plots are unmarked, but we are working with the cemetery to find out exactly where the Caution plots are, and if there are any markers that we've missed.

Stay tuned!