The cemetery of Trinity Churchyard in Manhattan had a stone slab engraved with the name of Charlotte Temple. People once made pilgrimages to the graveyard to lay flowers for poor Charlotte, a sympathetic character who died in poverty soon after childbirth, betrayed and forgotten in the city. But she was a character- a fictional character from the novel Charlotte, A Tale of Truth. It's not so well known these days, but it was America's best-selling novel between its publication in 1791 and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 -and remained quite popular for another hundred years.
Many people who read Charlotte, A Tale of Truth didn't realize it was fiction (the word "truth" in the title could have been confusing). Others knew it was a novel, but also knew that author Susanna Rowson said it was based on a real person. So who is buried beneath the stone slab in New York City? To learn the answer, Atlas Obscura goes into the history of the novel, the churchyard, and the stone, and explains a relatively recent investigation into the mystery of Charlotte Temple's grave.
