Box 310: A Life Left Behind

"I can't imagine that he doesn't remember the ashes being in that box," Hall said.

She has heard nothing from Henry de Gruchy, who is 68. A search by the comptroller's office turned up two motor vehicle warrants and an address and phone number in Falling Waters, W.Va. Recent phone messages left there have gone unreturned. But few of Maryland's 715,000 outstanding property claims get this attention -- the comptroller's office dug deeper only after a reporter began asking questions.

This is what public records reveal about Barbara Blanke de Gruchy:

She was a homemaker, born Jan. 30, 1909, in Greenwich, Conn. In 1984, she moved to a tiny ranch house in Frederick that she purchased for $61,000. Her husband had died three years earlier in Connecticut.

She had two children, Henry and Anne. A search for Anne de Gruchy turned up no one in the United States. On her deathbed, Barbara de Gruchy signed a three-page will dated Sept. 27, 1995, in which she left her estate to her son. She was estranged from her daughter, to whom she left nothing. On the day she was cremated, her house at 313 Heather Ridge Dr. sold for $82,000.

Her husband was British. She had a brother, Donald C. Blanke, whose initials were inscribed in her velvet jewelry box.

Her neighborhood of small, semidetached ranches and ramblers, built in the late 1970s for workers in a growing city on the edges of Washington, has turned over. A young mother from Mexico pushing a stroller, a clerk at the nearby Wal-Mart, a trainer at a health club -- these are the residents starting out now.

The Frederick City volunteer fire chief, de Gruchy's neighbor since 1978, said he can't recall her.

At her death, a brief notice appeared in a local newspaper. "She was the wife of the late Henry H.E.B. de Gruchy. Born Jan 30, 1909, in Greenwich, Conn, she was a homemaker," it read. "She had attended Brook Hill United Methodist Church." Her funeral was private.

Her dying wish, according to her will, was to have her ashes placed next to the remains of her husband, buried in the de Gruchy family grave at St. Andrew's Church in Steyning in the county of West Sussex in England.

"Maybe her son said, "I'll deal with this a little later,' " Hall said. She slid the plastic bag protecting the ashes back into the vault.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.