Where is Caesar Rodney really buried?

A cemetery marker at Christ Episcopal Church in Dover bears Caesar Rodney's name, but officials say he's buried elsewhere. (Buy photo) The News Journal/GARY EMEIGH

An elegant old marker in the cemetery at Christ Episcopal Church in Dover bears the name of Delaware's top Colonial patriot, Caesar Rodney.

But it's not his grave.

Rodney's burial spot -- like his face -- is a mystery of Delaware history, says Russ McCabe, director of the Delaware Public Archives.

Last week, Delaware Backstory told how the best-known name in state history belongs to a man who suffered facial cancer, wore veils, refused portraits and left no picture of himself -- leaving artists such as the sculptor of Wilmington's Rodney Square statue to create faces for him.

Many sources -- from the biographical directory of the U.S. Congress to www.politicalgraveyard.com -- say he's buried at Christ Church, which his family attended, McCabe said. The marker ensures such mistakes will continue, he said, but they deserve correction.

Rodney actually is buried in an unmarked grave in his family's unmarked plot on their former 800-acre farm east of Dover Air Force Base, he said.

And that's official. Doubters may check the state historic marker at the old farm site.

As for the marker at Christ Church, many folks used to believe Caesar Rodney's remains really were reburied there, McCabe said. But now, he said, historians agree it marks the burial spot of some remains of one of his unidentified relatives.

The childless, bachelor patriot died in 1784 of cancer, leaving a will that now is in a boxful of Caesar Rodney documents in the state's Public Archives.

His fragile, handwritten will -- brought out by McCabe for Delaware Backstory -- directs his brother, Thomas, to erect a brick wall around the family plot and a marker on his grave.

But McCabe said the brother, also a Revolutionary War hero, could not comply. When Caesar died, Thomas was in debtors' prison.

Thomas used so much of his resources to finance militia for independence that when post-war hard times hit, he couldn't pay his bills -- a common fate, McCabe said. When the farm was sold to cover debts, he said, the unmarked plot and generations of relatives' remains went with the land, still privately owned.

Many years later, legend says, some unidentified Dover men (said to include lawyers and lawmakers) were drinking and discussing Caesar Rodney when they deemed his unmarked grave unsuitably undignified. In patriotic and/or drunken fervor, they supposedly trespassed on the former Rodney land, dug 'til they got some bones and reburied them by the church that night by moonlight.

The monument later was added to mark his presumed new resting site -- suitable for a patriot who rode to Philadelphia in 1776 to break a state delegation tie to favor independence.

The marker, McCabe said, is not a headstone or gravestone, but a cenotaph or memorial.

Will we ever know exactly where at his family farm the First State's top patriot lies?

That, McCabe said, "is another Caesar Rodney mystery."

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