Poison and Bullets Fatal - Family Stories

I bet you never expected this to be a title for a blog entry.

I never did.

I'm sure a lot of people will read this based on the title. It's about my family, and it's actually interesting enough that you might read it.

I've been doing research on my family and the descendants of my last name. We didn't know much about our relatives much beyond the 1900's (well until now) and this always made me curious. I think my dad was curious too but he jokingly warned me that you never know what you might find. I really wanted to find things out though. My families last name is in the name of a street in my city and there is supposed to be a relation. Yet we didn't know the story behind the street.

The story went that our great great grandfather disinherited my great grandfather for who he married and thus was not going to get the land by that street. That story is a little more foggy now.

Anyway, in trying to search for more information on my relatives and names, dates of birth, burial grounds etc. I decided to go to our town library and look for obituaries in the town newspaper. They have all of the newspaper articles on microfilm going back to the 1800s.

I found a place on the libraries website that listed the names of people with my last name and the date of their obituary. I was able to find my relative. I got the microfilm and started looking.

According to records my great great grandpas obituary was on the front page on January 6, 1902. I read a headline that said "Poison and Bullets Fatal", and read other headlines and couldn't find the obituaries. It was driving me crazy.

Then I re-read "Poison and Bullets Fatal" and saw my relatives name.

Things just got a little more interesting.

The second headline said my relatives name followed by "Died in Hospital Late Saturday Night."

I thought to myself, 'wow, what did my relative do to get shot and poisoned?'. I figured someone killed him.

I was wrong.

No one killed my relative. The third headline read "Suicide Due To Despondency"

OHHHHHHHHH

Jeez

This is even more interesting than I could ever imagine, and it might help explain why we know so little about him other than his name. Then again that might not be the reason or only reason we know nothing about him.

As I read further I was surprised at my reaction. Here I am reading about my great great grandfather who died 86 years before I was born and I found myself having tears come to my eyes. I never knew the guy, yet he is a direct relative of mine. He shares my name, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. I found reading the article sad, and funny because my dad said "you never know what you might find." Boy was my dad correct so I called him right away with the news and he found it interesting.

It turns out that my great great grandfather was a really bad shot. The understatement of the century as he apparently fired four shots into his head, yet none of those shots proved to be fatal. They were apparently all scalp wounds. Since the guns didn't kill him he apparently poisoned himself with laudanum. He apparently did this in a hotel room in the Stamford House.

The Stamford House happens to be right near by, possibly even right next to where my father works. Who knew before today?

Four shots and poison. He was desperate to kill himself. He apparently wrote a note but it was not revealed who he wrote the letter too. He apparently mumbled something about "Lawrence" before he died. As far as I know there is no one named Lawrence in our family that he could have been talking about. (Maybe it will reveal itself)

My relative apparently had been suffering from rheumatism and other complaints. He apparently had to give up his business and at that time he became melancholy and brooded a great deal. To complicate things we believe that he had five kids, and his first four all died. We know his youngest son went on to be my great grandfather. Apparently two of my relatives sons died within a week of Scarlet Fever in 1888. One died at age three, the other, the oldest boy, at age six. At the time of his suicide he was separated from his wife Minnie (my great great grandmother). Minnie was applying to get a divorce.

What complicates our family story somewhat is the fact that when my relative committed suicide in 1902, his youngest son was only 14, and not married. Therefore it stands to reason that he wouldn't have disowned his son for marrying an Irish Catholic since he wasn't around to see his youngest son get married.

Who disowned my great grandfather. Well, we still don't know.

Maybe it was my great great grandfather's brother Chauncey, who was quite successful and actually lived to age 89, who disowned my great grandfather. (We hadn't ever known of a male relative of our last name to have lived past 58 until we heard about Chauncey)

That had made sense to me, until my father pointed out in the obituary that I had printed out that Chauncey's funeral was to be held at his nephews house. The obituary said that his only nephew was my great grandfather. Would my great grandfather have had a funeral for his uncle who disinherited him? I don't know if that makes sense. We may never know exactly why or who disinherited who, when and why.

It's a mystery, but atleast today we were able to clear a few things up.

I admit, I feel like a detective on Law and Order, or that I am writing the script for a show. This research has been quite interesting. I think this article might actually be interesting enough for people not in my family to read.