I have a funny little tale for you today! It has a vague tie to a recent post.

Charles Coghlan was born in 1842 in Paris, to Francis and Amie Marie Coghlan. His father was from Dublin and ran in literary circles with the likes of Charles Dickens and other famous authors.

Charles Coghlan

At the age of 16, Charles began his stage career with the Sadler’s Wells Theatre’s summer tour. But Coghlan’s dreams were broader. Even in these early days he already considered himself to be a playwright and unsuccessfully pitched a play to the manager of the Haymarket Theatre. Over the next few years, Coghlan’s star rose and his fame as an actor spread. Coghlan’s sister Rose also took to the stage and experienced significant success.

When he was 34, Coghlan came to America to make his Broadway debut. In 1893, 49-year-old Coghlan married Kühne Beveridge, age 19. Kühne was a sculptor and aspiring actress. But soon after the marriage, questions arose about Coghlan’s marital status. It turned out that Coghlan had a common-law wife, actress Louisa Elizabeth Thorn, for the past 25 years. The couple had a daughter named Gertrude who eventually followed her father to the stage and went on to have a 40-year career as an actress. The young sculptor decided to leave her much-older new husband.

Kühne Beveridge (LOC)

Coghlan continued to act. His last appearance on the stage was at Houston, Texas, on 28 October 1899, as Clarence in The Royal Box. He died on November 27, 1899 at age 57 in Galveston, Texas. I couldn’t find what his cause of death was. but he’d been ill for a month. His body was placed in a metal casket and stored in a vault at a local cemetery to await instructions from his family.

Coghlan had purchased a farm on Prince Edward Island in a small hamlet called Fortune Bridge. Initially, his body was supposed to be sent there for burial. But the press soon announced his body would be sent to New York to be cremated. Yet a year passed and the body remained in Galveston.

In 1900 the hurricane came and swept the casket away. Coghlan was evidently a beloved actor because when this news was published, the New York Actors Club posted a reward for the recovery of his remains. For years, the coffin was missing.

In 1907 a story was published that Coghlan’s casket washed up in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, near his farm on Prince Edward Island—two thousand miles north of Galveston. One witty reader suggested Coghlan’s body had perhaps been placed in a “homing coffin.” It turned out to be untrue. The real coffin was discovered, partially submerged, in 1907 by some hunters who found it in a marsh nine miles from Galveston.

Strangely enough, the body is again missing. None of the news reports that were published about the discovery of the coffin said what became of Coghlan’s body. No one knows where it was sent.