Mary McGovern's Garden

Mary McGovern was orphaned at sixteen in 1968; her parents died of botulism poisoning from an improperly put-up jar of tomatoes. Mary lived alone in the house for the next forty years. She went to school, volunteered at Judy's Kindness Kitchen with the Congregation Beth Shalom, and worked as executive administrative assistant to the Dean of Faculty at Brown University for the last eleven years of her life. She died in 2008 without family, of natural causes. Her house was taken by the city after her death and demolished to clear space for the widening of Route 220. During demolition, twenty-three bodies in various states of decomposition were found buried in her front yard.