A Revolutionary War veteran, a hidden gravestone and a mysterious name — ELIZABETH P. MOSBY, as inscribed on her tomb. Archeologists found a surprise waiting for them beneath the grass and dirt that covered a large marble marker, hidden for years, which they hoped would reveal the resting place of a Methodist preacher from North Carolina who fought in America’s revolution and died many years later in Vicksburg.

“We solved one mystery and found another,” said Dr. Ian Brown of the University of Alabama, who drove from Tuscaloosa with graduate student Lauren Downs, to uncover a grave marker in Cedar Hill Cemetery suspected to be that of the Rev. James Gwin, father of William McKendree Gwin, a California statesman whose career was colored by intrigue and achievement.

At the invitation of Vicksburg historian Gordon Cotton, they and Mississippi Department of Archives and History archaeologist Jayur Mehta — a former student of Brown’s at UA – gathered Saturday morning at a plot owned by descendents of the Gwins, where Cotton had discovered the marker several months ago. Cotton had become intrigued when he read James Gwin’s name in a roll of Revolutionary War veterans archived by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

What the excavators did not expect to find under years of dirt and grass was a second crypt, bearing a name unfamiliar to the researchers. The tomb of Elizabeth P. Mosby lay next to the reverend’s, and the dates inscribed appeared to show she died on Sept. 11, 1841, barely a month after Gwin. She is named on the stone as the wife of J.C. Mosby.

Who was she? Why bury her here? Why were her remains so close to Rev. Gwin?

“Perhaps she was the organist,” quipped Hobbs Freeman, a local artist who rode along on the excursion.

Though Gwin made a name for himself as a preacher, there is no evidence he ever had a congregation in Vicksburg, where he arrived rather late in life.

One of seven sons of a colonel in the Colonial Army, Gwin evidently went to war as a lad. His marker gives a birthdate of Jan. 10, 1769. “That would make him only about 12 or 13 when Cornwallis surrendered,” Cotton said. “Of course, it’s entirely possible. He wouldn’t have been the only 12-year-old serving in the army.”

After the Revolution, records show that Gwin served in the War of 1812, moved to Tennessee, had two sons — one of whom was killed from injuries sustained in a duel — and became a close associate of Andrew Jackson.

William McKendree Gwin, his more prominent heir, represented Mississippi in the 27th Congress and later became California’s first full-term senator. When California ratified its constitution in 1849, William Gwin delivered it to Washington. He was an actor behind-the-scenes as pressure built up before the Civil War; first working to mediate North-South tension, and then, after his arrest was orchestrated by U.S. forces, a staunch pro-Confederate (even though President Abraham Lincoln worked to arrange his release). During the conflict he traveled to France and tried to persuade Napoleon III to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy.

The truth about the Rev. James Gwin’s relationship to Elizabeth Mosby could not be unearthed at Cedar Hill Cemetery. The answer was buried in census data and probate records at the Old Courthouse Museum.

Neither musical accompanist nor bereaved lover, Mosby, as it happens, was Gwin’s daughter. And she died not one month after Mosby, as her tomb appeared to tell, but three years later, in 1844.

“No one thought of her being the daughter. Says more about us,” Brown mused.

U.S. Census data also showed that Elizabeth Mosby probably died in 1844, not in 1841, as weathered lettering on her marker seemed to indicate. The Gwin family had a house in downtown Vicksburg, long since destroyed, and one near Eagle Lake, which Cotton said is still occupied.

“These people had no clue that 150, 160 years later, people would be interested in them,” Brown said.

Stella Sigh, whose family plot in which Gwin and Mosby are buried, said she was not familiar with the name Mosby.

“I have a list of everyone buried there, but I didn’t know of a relative named that,” she said.