DANGER: Poking into the past can be interesting AND troubling

Last night I completed another item on my 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days.  I finished my Dad's side of the family's scrapbook.  Initially it was just to be about my Dad, but it morphed into the entire James family, from the late 1600s to my Dad's death in 2006.

I have already shared with you the story of my Civil War relative with PTSD who left his wife.  But he is not the most interesting person in my family tree.  There was a woman in the early 1800s who gave birth out of wedlock to a son.  Scandalous enough for the time, but the father of the baby was a Native American.  Family legend has the father being a famous chief.  Pretty cool, huh?  However, I am a historian and wanted to know the facts, so I roped my son in to assist me and we determined that more than likely we are NOT descended from this chief.  If I could locate any of my Uncle Bill's sons and get one of them to submit to DNA testing we could determine the truth for certain (apparently the testing has to be done on a son of a son.....so those three are the only ones who qualify out of all 34 of my cousins).

Then there was another lady who was really cranky.  At least I assume so, based on her will.  She tells her three daughters they get nothing since she already took care of their weddings.  One son gets $5, the other gets all of her land - over 100 acres, with the house, barn, various out buildings, all the livestock, and farm implements.  But only on the condition that he provide her a place to live, takes care of her through her final days, and provides a proper funeral and burial.  If he fails, everything goes to the $5 brother.  Needless to say, the son did his duty and got his big fat inheritance.  I am sure the family did NOT get together for Christmas after that will!

More recently, my father's grandfather is supposed to have committed suicide.  I have several newspaper clippings regarding his death and the police investigation.  Seems his beloved first wife died and he remarried.  But his second wife was a bit of a disappointment.  They did not get along well.  But he didn't seem to be depressed or distraught about it.  So everyone was surprised when wife #2 came screaming out the front door that John (my family is big on naming everyone either William or John.....they litter the records and only middle initials make it at all possible to keep track of who you are talking about) had killed himself. 

The police investigated and sure enough, there lay John on the bathroom floor, blood everywhere, his throat slit, an apparent suicide.

But the family didn't buy it.  All of John's children were grown and gone so no one was home but John and wife #2, so there are no other accounts to belie her story.  The police ruled it a suicide in spite of the other questionable evidence, which would have made for a great CSI episode.  This was the late 20s or early 30s, so no forensic units, no blood spatter patterns, no rigorous questioning of the witness.  John's now widow was covered in blood, but that could be explained by here bursting into the bathroom and cradling her dead husband.  But there were one or two little bitty items that no one bothered to ask about.  Maybe it was easier to label him a suicide and move on.  Maybe the police chief was inept.  Maybe he didn't like Great-Grandpa John.  Who knows?

But the questions that my grandpa always asked started with:  Where was the weapon?  Wouldn't a suicide still be holding the straight razor, or at least wouldn't it be on the floor near his body?  You'd think so, but it wasn't.  Turns out my great-grandfather slit his throat (if you believe his widow's story and the evidence of the facts) and then threw the straight razor into the toilet (the razor was indeed found in the plumbing leading from the toilet), then flushed the toilet (the old fashioned kind with a chain from the overhead tank) and then died.  Pretty amazing feat, huh?

Wife #2/widow provided what my Grandpa James always considered to be further evidence of her guilt.  A few years after the death of her husband (also her second) she was admitted into the state mental hospital where she remained for the rest of her life.  I don't know if she was sent there by her children, if she admitted herself, or if the police had something to do with it.  My Grandpa James always insisted that her final years in the mental hospital prove that she was crazy and that she was capable of, and indeed did, murder her own husband.

I'm just glad that she isn't related to me except through marriage!

Now that I have my Dad's side of the family's scrapbook complete, I want to start working on my Mom's side of the family.  There won't be as much drama, mental illness, and kooky behavior (my Dad's family is Welsh and Irish, Mom's is German and English, so they are much more respectable) but there are some war heroes and one murder victim where I am 100% certain that the men they hanged for that crime were innocent and were simply victims of local bigotry and prejudice.

But I'll save that story for another day.

A little family history

As a historian and a Civil War reencactor, I am particularly fond of a few items of family Civil War memorabilia that I own.  One is the bayonet that is supposedly a souvenir my great-great grandfather picked up from his Civil War days.  He was cavalry, so I am not sure what he would have wanted with an infantry rifle bayonet, but I have it, and would dearly love to unravel that mystery.

I also own his discharge papers, and some correspondence regarding his old-age pension.  All in all, I would guess I have about half a dozen pieces of John's service-related paperwork.

Another Civil War-era relic from that same grandsire is this:  

It's his presentation discharge from the army.  It details John's enlistment information (Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, the battles he fought (quite a few, including one of the bloodiest cav battles of the war), and the terms and conditions of his discharge (honorable due to the end of the war).  As you can see, it has a lot of very colorful and detailed bits of artwork around the borders:

And at the very bottom of the whole thing is the dedication.  The wording is pretty plain:  "To the memory of his beloved wife Rebecca" - poor John, he was a widower by the time this fancy thing was made up.  But no, Rebecca was alive and well.  And there is the first bit of the real mystery.  Why would John dedicate this to the memory of his wife if she was still alive?

Which leads me to an interesting family story, and a hypothesis or two on my part.  You see, after the war, John returned home, married Rebecca, they had a son, and he settled down to working at a mill in the next county over.  John and Rebecca lived in town and John had a habit of walking home to work for lunch each day, then returning to the mill to finish his shift.  One day John didn't come back from lunch, and after work his buddies showed up to check on his health.

Imagine their surprise when Rebecca informed them that John had left to "find his fortune".  Imagine Rebecca's! 

Seven years later finds Rebecca filing for a common-law divorce citing John's abandonment as the reason.  Turns out John made it all the way to his parent's house where he lived to the end of his days, a white-bearded old man who wrote poetry in his spare time.

Rebecca eventually remarried and her second husband raised John's son.  John also had some part in his son, William's life, and there are photographs of them, along with William's son and grandson (my grandpa and uncle).

Obviously John knew good and well that Rebecca was alive and well when he received this presentation discharge.  So why in the world did he dedicate it to her memory?

Could be he was dedicating it to his memory of her from back in the day when they were married.  Could be that since she remarried she was "dead" to him.  And my family is always good for the grand gesture.  And martyrdom is something we do particularly well.    Alas, there are no family records to tell us what in the world was going through his head when he chose that dedication.

It is these objects - the bayonet, the various pieces of correspondence, and the presentation discharge - that I would like to have appraised some day.  Not in order to sell them, but to know their value for insurance purposes and to be able to impress on future generations of my family their value and importance.

Now if only I had some items belonging to John and Rebecca's son, William.  He had a interesting end to his life.....the police report says he committed suicide by straight razor.  But his wife (a second one) spent the end of her life in the state insane asylum.  I'll have to tell that story some other day.


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