Missing Head
So assuming Osceola’s head was cut off, so what happened to it? Dr. Weedon’s granddaughter May McNeer Ward[1] wrote:
This is the true story of the disappearance of Osceola's head, as given to us by our grandfather. After the death of the Seminole chief, Dr. Weedon was able to be alone with the body. During this time he cut off the head, but left it in the coffin with the scarf that Osceola habitually wore tied as usual around the neck. Not long before the funeral Dr. Weedon removed the head and closed the coffin. Thus, the body was not dug up after burial and the head taken by unknown vandals, as various accounts have stated. Osceola was buried without his head.#39
The heart too? Or was that a new embellishment to the story?
In the following years rumors and legends spread about the fate of Osceola’s remains, some true some not. From The Biblical Recorder, June 19, 1846:
From the Phil. Saturday Courier.
Osceola's Grave.
The following beautiful poem, from the gifted authoress, Mrs. Sigourney, to Col. Sherburne, is founded on an incident during the late war with the Seminoles in Florida, and while the last struggle was being made to save their hunting grounds and homes from the grasp of the white man.— While Col. Sherburne was in the Cherokee Nation, completing a treaty with that powerful tribe, which had for so many years caused great inquietude on the borders, and which he accomplished, he received instructions from the Government to take a delegation of the Cherokee Chiefs (with the assent of the Nation) and proceed to Florida, directly to the Camps of the Seminole Chiefs, and endeavor to persuade them to bury the tomahawk, sign a treaty of lasting pence and remove West. The success of Colonel Sherburne, and the termination of that long and bloody war, is already well known in history. Osceola, the principal war chief, with his bend, hoisted the white flag, and under this emblem of peace, took the trail for St. Augustine, there to close the treaty, but when near Fort Payton, a few miles from St. Augustine, the chief and his warriors were suddenly surrounded by the American dragoons, dispatched by the orders of the commander-in-chief, and, not heeding the white flag, were seized, made prisoners, and marched under guard to St. Augustine, and there cast into the damp dungeon of Castle Marion. Some weeks after, the brave, young, heroic Osceola died of a broken heart, while surrounded, by his wife, children and weeping warriors, in a dismal dungeon. While sick, he give to his friend, Col. Sherburne, his war plumes, turban, pipe of peace, and some other relics to remember him, also a lock of his hair.— The day he died his head was severed from his body and placed in a vase of spirits, and now adorns the shelf of an apothecary in St. Augustine, Florida. His body was taken by the surgeons, and the headless skeleton of the chief may now be seen in the closet of a physician of note in Charleston, South Carolina. "We may therefore well preface the beautiful lines of Mrs. Sigourney with the unanswerable question,— Where is Osceola’s Grave?
Osceola’s Grave.
To Colonel John H. Sherburne.
BY MRS. John H. Sigourney
Red Eagle of the southern sky,
That dar’d the king of day!
Who brought thee from thine eyrie proud
To grovel in the clay?
High heart and brave! who struck thee down?
No blood thy plumes distained,
No arrow how the archer's bow
Thy heaving bosom pained.
What check'd thy pinion's soaring flight?
What dimm'd thy piercing eye?
Thy pale-faced-brother knows the tale,
But renders no reply.
Why plants he not some cypress tree
O'er thy lone resting place?
Why breathes he not the dirge lot thee,
Oh, noblest of thy race!
But lo! a sudden requiem flow’d,
In wild, unmeasur'd tide-
For pittying nature gave the strain
That haughty man denied.
A moaning bird from rifled nest
Poured forth, a tuneful lay,
And with sail melody detail'd
The ear of parting day,
So, where by balmy breezes fann’d
The dark palmettos wave,
That lonely ministrel pour'd its wail
O'er 0sceola's grave.
Hartford, March, 1847.
The article says the headless skeleton was in, “the closet of a physician of note” and his head, “placed in a vase of spirits, and now adorns the shelf of an apothecary in St. Augustine Florida.” The apothecary would have been that of Dr. Weedon.
There are other reports that Dr. Weedon put Osceola’s head on display at his pharmacy in St. Augustine. Weedon’s great grand-daughter May Ward wrote:
Dr. Weedon took the head back to St. Augustine with him, and kept it in his home on Bridge Street, where he also had his office, preserved by an embalming method that he had worked out himself.#39
I could imagine walking to Dr. Weedon’s pharmacy in St. Augustine and, there sitting on a shelf, was Osceola’s picked head in a jar. But what of Oceola's bones?
[1] May Young McNeer (1902-1994) was the daughter Isabella Weedon and Hampton C. McNeer. [Dr. Frederic Weedon, William H Weedon, Isabella Weedon (McNeer), May Young McNerr (Ward).
Updated: 04-19-2026
