Madame Alexandra of Estonia
The grave stone suggests a genteel lady who never left home without gloves and hat, who retained a charming foreign accent and accepted a gentleman’s arm when she left home for social engagements.
Home, according to her death certificate, was a large Spanish-style house on Lorraine Avenue in Highland Park, the toniest neighborhood in Dallas. The document further shows the deceased succumbed to (probable) colon cancer on December 13, 1966.
Oh, but wait…the cemetery marker says she died in 1965. The birth dates don’t line up, either. The stone insists Madame was born December 28, 1883; the death certificate says it was December 6, 1881.
Was the body buried in Dallas’s historic Oakland Cemetery that of an 82-year-old Capricorn…or an 85-year-old Sagittarius?
Not that it matters so much, all these years later, but Social Security records agree with the dates etched on the grave stone. Oakland Cemetery records, on the other hand, fall in line with those of the State of Texas.
Lending support to the latter option is the lady’s interment card — a paper card safeguarded for decades by the cemetery — that shows Madame was buried December 14, 1966, certainly a more timely removal than if she had died, as the marker says, a full year earlier.
That takes care of the math portion of this riddle. Now for the spelling test: The surname Alexandra appears on the stone while the death certificate and interment card spell the name Alexander.
In the image below, it’s clear the interment card’s scribe discovered these discrepancies, circled the dates in question, changed the surname and took exception to the use of “madame,” which suggests a French-speaking married woman. The scribe dropped the “Madame” and — perhaps drawing on some other source — added the middle initial “M”.
Why so many discrepancies on one 10" x 20" stone? It’s as if the person who purchased Julia Alexander’s marker — well-meaning though he or she may have been — did not know enough about the lady who died to stick to the facts.
Or else, the buyer treasured the deceased enough to embellish the truth, to honor the woman by elevating her status with the use of “Madame” and slicing a few years off her age.
What can we know about someone who is neither a family member nor a public figure more than a half-century after death and burial? We rely on documents to provide an outline — a skeleton, if you will — and add as much flesh as possible.
That flesh often comes from the official death certificate issued by the state, in which a named “informant” provides biographical information — parents, marital status, occupation, address, birth place/date, and more. The better the informant knows the deceased, the more accurate the death certificate. A parent or spouse, for example, often provides more reliable details than a child or friend.
The informant on Julia Alexander’s death certificate was a well-to-do Highland Park divorcee named Vera Hartt Martin (b. 1900, d. 1975). Some would call her a socialite, a woman whose name appeared countless times in the Dallas Morning News society columns in the 1960’s and 1970's.
Mrs. Martin was more than a party-goer, however. She was the first president of both the Dallas Symphony League and the Dallas Civic Opera Women’s Board, and a member of the Dallas Civic Ballet Board. She seemingly worked full-time as a committee woman, arranging for benefits, galas, fashion shows, and auctions to support the arts.
Mrs. Martin’s home on Lorraine Avenue was often the site of dinner parties and other gatherings in support of painters, dancers and musicians. Likely helping her prepare for these events was Julia Alexander, her maid.
That explains the prestigious address on Julia Alexander’s death certificate. Given her age, it seems likely she was living with her employer at the time of her death. Mrs. Martin reported that Julia was “retired” and “divorced.” And that she was born — not in Estonia — but in Poland.
That Mrs. Martin failed to provide the names of Julia’s parents and her citizenship status gives credibility to the document. Her knowledge was more in keeping with that of an employer rather than a family member.
Because Mrs. Martin employed Julia and officially spoke for her after death, it’s reasonable to assume she purchased the stone that has lain in Oakland for 57 years. If so, it’s unclear why the information on the stone differs from the account she provided on the death certificate.
Two words that appear on the interment card may provide a clue. Above the words “lot owner” is written NO SURVIVOR. Those words don’t appear on the stone.
Perhaps Mrs. Martin stuck to the facts when it came to a state record, but took a flight of fancy when she chose the words…and numbers…for the marker. Who, after all, would contradict what it says?
Today, those who visit Madame Julia Alexandra’s grave in Oakland Cemetery can enjoy the way the words “Madame” and “Estonia” stir their imaginations, bringing to mind some old-world aristocrat mysteriously put to rest in a Dallas cemetery.
Madame’s grave is also a reminder to question what we read: Words aren’t necessarily true simply because they’re set in stone.
