Pine BarrensField Notes

People and incidents

Howard G. Bryan

Documented account; Mount Holly newspaper report compared; probable Maryland burial record found

A Camp Dix private missing since early June 1936 was found dead near the camp at the end of the month. An autopsy found no injury, and authorities expected to rule the death natural, although the money he had left camp with was never found.

Investigation

Bryan had reportedly received $83 in pay and bonus money the day before disappearing. The body’s condition initially prevented Burlington County Chief Ellis Jr. Parker from deciding whether he had been killed, so Coroner Clarence S. Roberts Jr. ordered a postmortem.

County Physician John S. Conroy found no wounds or broken bones. Roberts consequently planned to certify death from natural causes. OCR renders the surname as “Bonn” once, but the follow-up and source record title support Bryan.

The Mount Holly report

The New Jersey Mirror of July 1, 1936, led its front page with the discovery. It said the badly decomposed body was found the previous afternoon, June 30, while police and soldiers were searching for a different absent soldier. The finders were Private Charles J. Benjamin, a cook in Company A of the 16th Infantry, and his visitor Charles Roselis of Baltimore, a former Marine. The two had gone into the orchard to pick berries. The body was in full army uniform, with a partly filled liquor bottle beside it.

The paper called the identification tentative. It printed the name as Private Howard P. Bryan, not Howard G., and gave his age as 43. The body went to Grobler’s undertaking establishment in Pemberton, where Dr. Conroy’s autopsy found no cause of death, no fractures and no sign of foul play. Conroy also said he believed he had given surgical care to the same man in a hospital in France during the First World War.

The Mirror described the money differently from the clippings. According to camp officials, Bryan and several friends left camp on June 1 to celebrate his re-enlistment. He had just received his monthly pay of $23 and a $60 balance from his clothing allowance, about $80 in all. Police found no money on the body. The paper also said he was eligible for a bonus of nearly $1,000, and that bonus payments had reached the camp about two weeks earlier, while he was still missing. The $83 in the clippings may therefore be pay and allowance money rather than a bonus.

Two soldiers told investigators that they had seen Bryan in several Wrightstown cafés on the night of June 1. Around midnight, they said, he was walking near the orchard with a man they did not recognize. The report does not say whether that man was ever identified. It does not reconcile the missing money with the natural-death finding either.

What remains unsettled

The accounts disagree on his middle initial (G. or P.) and on whether he was found in a field or an orchard. The June 1 and June 2 dates are not in conflict: the Mirror has him last seen on the night of June 1 and carried as missing from June 2. The report was published before any coroner’s certificate. No final certificate or military casualty file has been examined, so the natural-death ruling is still documented only as the coroner’s stated intention.

A burial record from Maryland

A Find a Grave memorial (69962329) for “Howard Price Bryan,” 1893–1936, is very likely the same man. It gives a birth date of May 1, 1893 in Centreville, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland — the same town the newspaper accounts name as his home — and a death date of June 2, 1936 in Burlington County, New Jersey, matching the date the clippings give for when he was reported missing. He is buried at Chesterfield Cemetery in Centreville. The grave inscription reads “Maryland PVT 16 INF,” confirming the 16th Infantry unit independently of the newspaper reports. The memorial names his father as Thomas E. Bryan (a separately linked Find a Grave memorial) and lists no other family. The memorial does not cite the newspaper coverage, note a cause of death, or resolve the P./G. middle-initial discrepancy — its own page title uses “Price.”

Sources

  1. Two unidentified 1936 clippings: the discovery report and autopsy follow-up. Dates, pages, and publications require verification.
  2. New Jersey Mirror (Mount Holly), July 1, 1936, p. 1, col. 1, “Find Dead Soldier During Search for Another Absentee / Man Missing from Camp Dix Since June 2—Other Gone Since Sunday / Autopsy Reveals No Foul Play,” accession 19776 in the Burlington County Library System’s New Jersey Mirror index. Inspected September 11, 2026. The index gives a full typed transcription by library staff or volunteers, with some typing errors (it spells the physician “Conry” once); the page image itself was not viewed. The same article covers the search for Private Edward F. Graham of the 18th Infantry, a separate case.
  3. Find a Grave memorial 69962329, “Howard Price Bryan” (1893–1936), Chesterfield Cemetery, Centreville, Maryland, findagrave.com/memorial/69962329/howard-price-bryan. Inspected September 11, 2026. Gives birth/death dates, birthplace, death location, burial place, a “Maryland PVT 16 INF” grave inscription, and father Thomas E. Bryan; does not cite the newspaper coverage or a cause of death, and does not resolve the P./G. middle-initial discrepancy. Presented here as a probable, not certain, match.