(Left) Jeanette Findley and her mother, Jean Miller, the last remaining relative of Ila Mae’s generation, stand with the tombstone. (Photo by Dani Blackburn)

By DANI BLACKBURN

A little girl’s original 97-year-old tombstone is being returned to her grave after a decade’s long search for the owner.

The only little girl in a family full of boys, Ila Mae Miller was born April 21, 1911 as the oldest child of John and Dena Miller.

She passed away just shy of her eighth birthday on Jan. 16, 1919, from the Spanish Influenza. The autopsy showed the little girl had pneumonia in two of her lungs.

Her original tombstone, believed to have been stolen, sat in the evidence room of the old Montague County jailhouse. When the new jail was built in 1980, the tombstone was left behind in what became the Old Jail Museum.

The stone has sat all alone at the bottom of the metal staircase, waiting to be returned where it belonged.

That search was over this week as descendants traveled from Oregon to retrieve the stone for Ila Mae. Read the full feature in the weekend News.

Top photo: Jeanette Findley smiles as she touches her ancestor’s long lost tombstone. (Photo by Dani Blackburn)