William Potes’ tombstone lay around in Donna Ballard’s backyard in Krugerville for so many years that he became part of the family.

Her husband, Mike, brought the stone home 26 years ago, hoping she could find out where it belonged.

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The tombstone of William Potes, found 26 years ago on the campus of Texas Woman’s University, now rests next to the grave of his wife, Sarah, in Drake, Okla.

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Last week, she did.

“We just thought of him as William,” Donna Ballard said. “He mostly lay in the shade of a tree in the backyard, and we’d move him when we mowed. Over the years, he just became part of our family. People would see him and say, ‘is that a real gravestone?’ Some asked if it was haunted. I don’t know if William was happy where he was, but he never gave us any trouble.”

It began in 1982, when Texas Woman’s University was tearing down its dormitory row, where the new student apartments now lie off Locust Street. Pud Ballard, who was not related to the Ballards, was a security guard on campus and when someone found a gravestone in one of the abandoned rooms, he thought of Donna Ballard.

“He knew I was obsessed with genealogy,” she said. “He thought I could find where the stone came from. Genealogy was not as easy back then. You had to go to libraries and pore over books. I couldn’t find William, but every once in awhile, I’d try again.”

Last week, she was sitting on a bench in her backyard and she began to think once more about a grave somewhere without a marker — a family somewhere without their ancestor in his rightful place.

“I said, ‘You know, William, it’s time to find you a home.’”

So she sat down at her computer and went to work. She spent days researching for eight or 10 hours at a sitting.

“Mike would yell at me, ‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ and I’d yell back, ‘No, I’m tracing William.”

She found many William Potes on old census records, she said. But gradually, she narrowed it down. And finally she found a note on a Web site from someone who wanted to know if anyone could tell him where William Potes was buried. She checked out the similarities. This was “her” William Potes, she said.

She replied and received several messages from an excited 31-year-old man in Drake, Okla.

Roy Wilkerson had been looking for William for most of his life. When he was 14, he stayed with his great-grandfather, Herbert Potes, for two weeks in the summer. The elder man was dying, Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail. But he spent a lot of time telling Wilkerson stories of his heritage. Wilkerson took notes.

His great-grandfather’s grand­­­father was William Potes. He and his wife, Sarah, brought their family to Indian Territory in 1884. He suffered from eye and chest injuries he received during the Civil War while serving in the Union Army.

Potes died Feb. 13, 1886. There were no cemeteries in the area, so he was buried in the countryside somewhere between Dougherty and Nebo, Okla.

His grave was lost until sometime after World II, Wilkerson learned. At that time, William’s grandson, Ira, found it and put a fence around it. That was the last anyone knows of the grave.

Wilkerson began a search of his own when his grandfather died later that summer, he wrote. He interviewed numerous family members over the years and searched the old books and census records.

He posted the message on the Internet site in 2006 and forgot it. So when an e-mail popped up July 8 asking if he was still interested in William Potes, he was astonished.

E-mails flew back and forth from Texas to Oklahoma as the two amateur genealogists learned more about each other and about William. Wilkerson had learned that his ancestor had developed an eye infection that left him totally blind. That coincided with information that Donna Ballard had gained on an 1880 census that stated he had “sore eyes” and was disabled.

They agreed to meet Saturday to put his stone in the cemetery where Sarah is buried.

“I’ve called my mother, and she’s called my grandmother and they’re both crying,” Wilkerson wrote.

The Ballards drove to Okla­homa on Saturday to meet the Wilkersons so they could follow them to the cemetery.

“We walked to the truck and Roy started to the back, and Mike said, ‘we didn’t make him ride in the back. He rode in the truck with us.’ Mike opened the back door and William’s stone was lying on the back seat. Roy stepped inside the door and placed his hand on the tombstone. He leaned back against the door and his eyes started to tear up. They say grown men don’t cry, but that depends on how big of a heart they have,” she said.

They placed William’s stone next to Sarah’s in the little family cemetery and took some pictures. Then Wilkerson took the stone home.

He must secure permission to pour a slab for William’s stone, and then he plans a memorial service.

“Roy Wilkerson is a genealogist’s dream come true,” Donna Ballard said. “Every family needs one.”

Questions remain, of course.

Who removed William’s stone from his final resting place? How did it get from that lonely Oklahoma grave site to a dormitory at TWU? When and why did it get there? Why was it left there when the tenant moved out?

And where are William’s bones now?

“We’ll probably never know,” Donna Ballard said. “But now, I look out in the yard and I think, William, where are you? I miss him,” she said.

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .