The Brooch on the Fence Post: Why a Dead Woman's Clasp Matters

The Brooch on the Fence Post: Why a Dead Woman's Clasp Matters

Cold, deliberate, and impossible: a silver brooch was found clasped face-up on a fence post seven miles from a barn where a woman had been buried eleven days earlier - the clasp could only be fastened with two hands. How did Kelly Lewis’s brooch travel frozen Kansas prairie and who closed it after she was already dead?

In this episode, we follow the discovery, the county records, and the people who put the object back into a case that had been closed; we trace the timeline from the hayloft fall to the brooch found on January 9, 1884, and ask what that clasp means for the official ruling of accident.

Person: Kelly Lewis
Date (death found): December 29, 1883
Date (brooch found): January 9, 1884 at 10:15 AM
Location: seven miles from the Lewis barn, Calloway Flats, Trego County, Kansas
Status (cause ruled): accident (fall from hayloft)

- The brooch was found face-up and clasp fastened on top of a fence post at the base, seven miles from the Lewis barn.
- Kelly Lewis had been buried for eleven days when the brooch was found.
- The clasp mechanism requires two hands and deliberate pressure to engage; it does not close itself.
- Kelly Lewis died on December 29, 1883 from a broken neck after a roughly fourteen-foot fall from a hayloft.
- The brooch was recognized as the same one Kelly Lewis had worn at the Harwick Cattlemen’s Exchange auction in October.

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