In the fall of 1816, a husband and wife disembarked from a ship in Alexandria harbor and checked into the City Hotel attached to Gadsby’s Tavern. Neither gave a name. The man’s wife was seriously ill, and died after a few days. Her grieving husband commissioned a table-like tombstone that read: “To the memory of a Female Stranger. This stone is placed here by her disconsolate Husband in whose arms she sighed out her latest breath and who under God did his utmost even to soothe the cold dead ear of death…” He then vanished from history.