Twice Dead, Twice Buried - the Grave Robbery of Alex McLean

Twice dead, twice buried - the grave robbery of Alex McLean

Son of a Scottish immigrant, Alex McLean, a lumber inspector at Stearns Siding who met his untimely death at age 34 from tuberculosis on Aug. 11, 1898, is a name that still resurfaces from the layers of local history.

Baldwin, Michigan, Grave-Robbery Case and 1898 Life Insurance Application

In the fall of 1898, a grave-robbery case in Baldwin, Michigan, centered on the grave of a man who had died months earlier. That year, an application was made for a $2,000 life insurance policy. The case would take months to unravel and end with a prison sentence at the state reformatory in Ionia. The man at the center of it was Andrew White, who had worked at the same shingle mill at Stearns Siding as Alex McLean, a lumber inspector described a…