Family Tracks Down Young Girl's Long Lost Burial Plot

A retired prison psychologist from Weatherford got the chance to mend a family wound that’s lingered for more than 100 years. 

12-year-old Veronica Crook died after falling off a horse in 1908 in Bessie, Oklahoma, close to the Washita River. 

Her mother was Fran Fletcher Dodson’s grandmother.  

Dodson said her grandmother lost track of her daughter’s unmarked grave in Bessie’s Union Hatchett Cemetary over the years. 

Union Hatchett had changed shape over the decades. 

Dodson said 50 years ago, she promised her grandmother she would find Veronica Crook’s grave. 

Dodson and her husband Russell, with the help of Union Hatchett Secretary-Treasurer Darlene Williamson, recently found Veronica Crook’s grave. 

Wednesday afternoon, they had a large polished granite headstone placed at the head of Veronica’s grave.

“She’s in Heaven, she’s looking down on us now,” Dodson said. "Veronica is, so is my Grandma.”