In 1886 Margarette King was buried on a grassy hilltop overlooking her family’s Hutchinson County homestead and the James River.
She was 44 when her family laid her to rest.
More than 130 years later three friends uncovered her ornate white marble headstone and with some help from social media they connected Margarette King with some of her descendants
“We had a pretty good general idea when we started stumbling around up here. But I was way up on top of this knoll up here looking for it. My son and I were actually on our way back heading that way, when I came across that footstone. Again, had I been three feet over that way, or two feet over that way, we would not be standing here today,” Rob Monson said.
Rob Monson has just trekked about a mile on foot through a cattle pasture and has come to rest on a hilltop covered in waist-high grass. Beside him stand his friends Tom Heisinger and DeWayne Winter. The three men are looking at an ornate, white marble headstone.
Tom Heisinger reads the inscription.
“Margarette, wife of Henry King, Died May 16,1886. Aged 44 years, 4 months 9 days,” Heisinger said.
Today Margarette King’s headstone stands upright atop a concrete base. It is surrounded by a protective fence.
For decades – maybe longer - the headstone was buried several inches under topsoil and native grasses. Tom Heisinger, Rob Monson and DeWayne Winter are responsible for its discovery and restoration. The men grew up in Parkston and even though they were a few grades apart in school, they are all Veterans and over the years they have bonded over this shared experience.
Rob Monson explained how the headstone hunt began in 2008 with a different type of hunt.
“I was talking with DeWayne about turkey hunting out here. And he said, “Hey, if you are ever walking around up there, there is a grave up at the top of the hill. And then we need to go to him so he can explain,’” Monson said.
“I just live a mile and a half south of here. I suppose he was showing it to us this. In the 70s my dad showed us this. It kind of got forgotten about,” Winter said.
“We were up here looking around on top of this, kind of where DeWayne said this thing might be, and it was a little bit earlier in the spring, the grass was not quite as high, and I’ll be darned if it didn’t find a perfectly square stone. And as I picked it up, sure enough the corner was broke off, just like DeWayne had described it, and I said, “Oh my gosh, I found the grave.” The plan was, I told Tom about it, we worked together at the school, the plan was always to come back out, but years go by, years go by, and then, we finally did come back right before COVID hit,” Monson said.
When Monson and Heisinger returned to the pasture hilltop in 2020 to relocate the stone Monson and his son found during the turkey hunt, Heisinger uncovered Margarette’s headstone.
Tom Heisinger.
“I had the chunk of concrete that DeWayne had described to Rob and Rob found in 2008. … I had this in my hand, I was just about ready to set it back in the hole, the same hole it came out of and this chunk of dirt, about an inch in diameter and I looked down in the hole and here is this nice, well you can see this the color of this headstone …the foot stone was laying on top of the headstone,” Heisinger said.
When the men returned to the hilltop to re-set the headstone they came with tools, quikrete and questions.
Who was Margarette King? When they researched 1886 plat maps, the farmland was owned by Heinrich Koenig – not Henry King.
To find answers, Monson posted a photo of the headstone to South Dakota History of Towns, Cities, People and Places Who Made it Great Facebook page. And this is how the men connected with area historian Daniel Flyger.
Turns out Margarette King is Flyger’s wife’s great aunt making Henry King his wife’s great uncle.
And because of the family connection, Flyger was able to solve the mystery of why Heinrich Koenig’s name is on the plat map, not Henry King.
“What surprised the socks off me, is when they discovered this tombstone, it doesn’t read Koenig, it reads King. Now, Koenig in German is the German word for king. What that tells me is that someone put that stone there sometime after World War I, because the family changed their name from Koenig to King after World War I,” Flyger said.
To avoid being seen as German sympathizers, Flyger explained that during World War I most members of the family changed their name from Koenig to King.
Today the men not only know who Margarette King was, but they have met some of her ancestors. They say it feels good knowing their efforts have reconnected her to family.
Again Tom Heisinger.
“No man left behind. I think once you serve in the military, like we all have, that is somewhat instilled in you. She was left behind and needed to be taken care of,” Heisinger said.
Through the process of restoring Margarette King’s headstone, Heisinger, Winter and Monson learned that no one knows where her husband Henry’s grave is located. They plan to hunt for it next.
