Was it suicide?

On Saturday afternoon, Nov. 23, 1912, Claus Wisberg left his home on Providence’s Shafter Street in the company of his trusty hunting dog. They set out for Waterman Woods — a heavily forested piece of land in Johnston hosting more murders, assaults and suicides than any other acreage in the area. A few hours after shooting at small prey, Wisberg watched his dog zone in on a clump of bushes at the bottom of a steep ledge. Nearly covered with autumn leaves was a pile of clothing. Inside the clothing was a pile of bones.

Wisberg brought authorities to the site. Along with the human remains, they discovered a newspaper dated June 29, 1912 inside a wrapper and envelope postmarked June 30. The envelope was addressed to Henry Duckert. The remains and the artifacts found with them were transported to the morgue of funeral directors James William Carpenter & Son at 85 Plainfield St.

Henry Duckert had been missing from the lodging house of 45-year-old Mary Hunt, located at 352 Weybosset St, since he was last seen there on July 5 — over four months earlier. Hunt was called to the morgue and positively identified the remains as those of Henry. She recognized the clothing and the straw hat which was found with it as being the one the 42-year-old man always wore. Hunt admitted that she knew little about Henry and had no idea where his family could be found, but she believed that his father was a clergyman. Just prior to his disappearance, he had been drinking quite heavily, Hunt told police.

Authorities believed that Henry committed suicide shortly after he was last seen at the lodging house, attaching a rope to a tree at the top of the ledge, putting the other end around his neck and jumping. As the rope and body decomposed, the clothed skeleton fell to the ground at the foot of the ledge, in the bushes where it was found. No reason could be determined, however, for Henry to take his own life.  

A brother of the dead man was tracked down and although he visited the morgue and provided his own positive identification of the remains, he made no effort to claim them. Henry’s body lay in the morgue for the next week.

Company I of the 5th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers — Spanish War veterans of Attleboro — learned of the man laying unclaimed in Johnston. They knew no Henry Duckert but they did know a Hans Anderson, Henry’s real name.

Born on May 12, 1870 in Norway to Alfred Anderson and Maren Paulson, Henry changed his name after his mother married his stepfather Carl Wiggo Duckert, a minister. He came to America in 1891 and married Ella Sekunda Westberg in Providence in July of 1894 and they went on to have a handful of children. The family eventually set up housekeeping on Bullock’s Court in East Providence and Henry worked regularly as a jeweler, manufacturing rings. The couple had split up before 1910 and Henry was living on Chestnut Road in Providence at the lodging house of 45-year-old German native Emma Stein. Ella married several times and had additional children.

Realizing that the unclaimed suicide was their old comrade, the Spanish War veterans arranged for Henry to have a military funeral. Services were led from the Carpenter & Son funeral rooms with Reverend Gray — pastor of the Tabernacle Methodist Episcopal Church — conducting the scriptural readings. Henry was respectfully laid to rest at North End Cemetery with 25 of the men he had patriotically fought alongside standing there to see him off.