Slave Ownership in Our Family

My mother's family never lived closer to the Mason-Dixon line than southern Illinois. My Dad's grandfather was a carpetbagger, having moved to Texas in the 1880's for the opportunities there. But his daughter married a boy from her Dad's hometown and moved to Illinois, so our southern roots were really shallow. My great-aunt Ruth used to say she'd never get anywhere in Texas society because she couldn't join the Daugters of the Confedeacy. (She joined every other genealogical society in sight, but that's a different story.)

My husband's mother's family were all Swedes who came over in the 1880's. But his father's family never lived farther north than Oklahoma until his Dad moved to Rock Island to work at the arsenal. After Navy training in Chicago, he settled there after WW2.

For a long time I haven't been able to find Peter Jeremiah Norris in the 1860 census. In 1850 he was in Missouri. In 1870 he was back in Culpeper County, Virginia. Yesterday I was working on the McGhees (PJ's daughter marri
ed a McGhee) and clicked on the 1850 census, found my McGhee and looked at the image. Instead of what I expected, I found myself looking at the 1850 slave census. Sure enough, my McGhee owned 4 slaves.

On a whim, I checked the Norrises in Culpeper County in the 1860 slave census. And up came P.J. Norris. So I opened the regular 1860 census and searched for his slaveowning neighbor. And right on the same page was PJ and his family, though you would never know it from the beautiful, but completely illegible handwriting. One of those times where "if you know what it says, you can see it says it," as my Dad used to say.

I've always said in genealogy there is a time when information wants to be revealed, and sometimes you just have to be patient.

By the way, James D. McGhee owned 4 slaves in 1850, and his widow 6 slaves in 1860. One was a woman who was evidently the mother of all the younger slaves. But the McGhees did not own an adult male. So who fathered her children? Did a relative or neigbor own her husband?

Peter Jeremiah Norris owned no slaves in 1850 and 2 slaves in 1860, both adult males. They probably worked in his store or warehouse.

William Rutledge owned no slaves in 1850, nor did his mother. But in 1860 he owned a 56-year old man. I'd sure love to know how that happened, because the Rutledges were always small farmers in southwestern Tennessee.

Scalded to Death in a Railroad Accident

Newspapers sure can mess things up. And once they do, you can spend years trying to find the facts.

My ancestor Alexander McClelland had many children, their births and deaths all faithfully recorded in his family bible by his wife, until she died. One child was a mystery to my mother, and to me, for decades. Rufus Buchanan McClelland was listed as born 30 September 1856. But we could never find him in any census after 1880.

Last fall I took a trip to Marion County, Illinois, where all these McClellands were born and raised. The Marion County Genealogical and Historical Society folks were just wonderful to me. I acquired the complete set of their quarterly publications, and learned much by going through them.

In 1980 they published a McClelland genealogy compiled by Mary K. Lyons. Rufus was listed, with the notation "died before 1889–killed in a railroad accident in Indiana." Newspapers in the 1880's were full of railroad accidents. But no article listed Rufus.

One of the treasures of the Marion society was George E. Ross. He searched through Marion county newspapers for years, gleaning anything that could be useful to a family historian. And the results were published by the Marion Society in their quarterlies. That's where I found

"Rufus McClelland, son of Alexander, was scaleded to death in a railroad accident near Shoals, Indiana." Several local papers reported this information on November 17, 1876.

So naturally I ran to my newspaper databases, and sure enough, there were articles about a grizzly accident near Shoals, Indiana. But none of the reported dead had names anything like Rufus McClelland, and the accident was on the 4th.

In the midddle of the night I woke up with an inspiration. What if there had been another grizzly accident around the same time, and the newspapers confused them? So I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs and looked. This time I searched for railroad accidents.

Sure enough, I found it. The best coverage was in the St. Louis Globe Democrat, 19 and 20 November 1876, "A railroad accident occurred on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad at Sparksville, Illinois, at Mitchell Station, at 1 o'clock in the morning on Novembe 18, resulting in the death of two brakemen, Frank Albert (other articles say his name was Dirge) and Lucas McClelland. The westward bound freight train went upon a side track at that place to let the Western express paas. Two brakemen were asleep in the caboose and the conductor opened the switch and forgot to close it again. The express thundered along, and ran into the caboose, making a fearful wreck. Two freight brakemen, Dirge and McClelland, were so badly scalded that both died. The baggage and postal cars of the express were telescoped, crushing a leg off A. Greenland, postal clerk. Others were slightly injured. The engine, baggage car, postal car, caboose and five or six freight cars were badly wrecked.

Rufus was just 21. All of his brothers worked on the railroad for a while. Marion Clark lived to retire from one. My ancestor, John Allen, lost an arm working for the Illinois Central, and supposedly threw himself into the Mississippi River. Oliver shot himself. But those are stories for another day.

Divorce Comes From Out of the Blue

You have to love newspapers. Public records give you the bones, birth, death, marriage dates, but the newspapers give you the meat that fills out a person.

One of my husband's greatgrandmother's cousins was involved in a scandalous divorce suit in Omaha in 1929, one so juicy it made the front pages of the Omaha World Herald.

Frank Sheldon Selby left Omaha for Army reserve training camp at Camp Sparta, Wisconsin. Our ancestor's cousin Mary Norris Selby saw her husband off at the train station, as she always did, and kissed him a fond goodbye.

The next day he wrote her a letter asking her to divorce him. She was shocked! After she wrote him back "No," he telegraphed her that he'd instructed his attorney to file a petition for divorce. He'd talked to them before he left town.

The newspaper articles on the subsequent trial was full of his testimony about her cruelty to him. She scratched him, kept him from his family and threatened to commit suicide several times. She denied or explained everything. The judge said the testimony was contradictory, and hoped they'd work it out, but Frank Selby said he'd never live with his wife again. The judge finally ruled they couldn't possibly live together after all this, and granted the divorce. Mary wasn't granted any alimony, but was awarded the houshold furniture.

She appealed the settlement to the Nebraska Supreme Court, and lost.

She moved to Huntington Park, California and died there in 1986, never remarrying. Frank stayed in Omaha and remarried a few years after the divorce.

In a sad and ironic note, her father did commit suicide back in Omaha.

Killed in an Explosion

Rex Robert Campbell of Burlington, Washington, born 14 January 1899, was a problem at an early age. In February 1919 he pled guilty to stealing Sheriff Charles Stevenson's car from the main streets of Anacortes, Washington on a Friday evening. Rex rode "in state" from Anacortes to Burlington, and then abandoned the car without knowing whose car he was driving.

In April 1919 he was selling "Dago Red" at a cement works in Balfour. It was prohibition, and he was selling bootlegged booze made from raisins, sugar and water, a sort of wine with an "awful kick." The men at the plant bought the stuff and went wild after drinking it, becoming unmanageable. The steam shovel operator was apparently really hit hard, and damaged the shovel so badly that repairs cost $700. Campbell was sentenced to one year at the Monroe Reformatory and the sheriff seized his still.

Campbell's life did not get any easier. In the 1920 census he is an inmate in the Washington State Reformatory. Somewhere along the line he married, but wife Kathleen divorced him in 1932 for non-support.

He made papers all over the country in April 1938, when a fishing boat blew up off Orcas Island in Puget Sound. George Patrick, a Coal Point Indian, reported hearing a blast and seeing the boat blown to pieces more than a mile offshore. He rowed to the scene but said the last survivor lost his hold on the wreckage and disappeared before he arrived. No wreckage was found, but search parties found three bodies. I haven't found reports of them finding Rex's, but he has a grave marker at Green Hill Memorial Cemberary, Burlington, Skagit County Washington, and the death date is that of the explosion.

The Fragility of Human Life: Young Charles Rowley

When I read about people who won't vaccinate their children, I think about stories like this one in the Bellingham (Washington) Herald 3 May 1907 page 10:

Burlington, Wash., May 3–Charles Rowley, the 18-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. A. Rowley took will with spinal meningitis Wednesday evening about 10 o’clock at Cleary’s Mill Bow, and was brought to the home of his parents, about a mile south of this place, where he grew rapidly worse, and at 4 a.m. Dr. I.B. Shoemaker was summoned, but nothing could be done to save his life. He died between 9 and 10 o’clock yesterday morning.

No arrangements have yet been made for the funeral, but he will probably be buried sometime tomorrow.

No parent today should have to suffer what these parents did.

Killed by Tornado: Thomas Benjamin Norris and Daughter Cora Lee

My husband's great-grandmother, Laura Norris McGhee, was living in Muskogee, Oklahoma on March 23, 1913 when a devastating tornado struck Omaha, Nebraska.

When she read the article in her local paper, The Muskogee Times Democrat, about the devastation, she saw her brother's name, and her niece's, in the list of those killed.

The Omaha World Herald printed an article, "Unusual Pathos in Death of T.B. Norris and Daughter." It said T.B. and his daughter, Corie Lee, had been playmates since her earliest childhood. At the time of the tornado she was recovering from a lingering illness, and the day it struck was the first day s
he was able to join the family in the living room. Suddenly a guest, George Pratt (who later married her sister, Edith), called out the trees were coming. T.B. Picked up his daughter and started with her to the cellar, She was clasped tight in his arms when rescuers pulled them from the wreckage, dead. Cornelia was 26 when she died.

Edith married George Pratt in 1915 and lived in Omaha until she died in 1977. Mrs. T.B. Norris lived with them until she died in 1938. Every year Mrs. Norris spent several months back in Virginia, visiting family. Both she and her husband are buried in Culpeper, Virginia near their daughter Corrie.

The whole story of T.B. Norris and the tornado can be found on the Cedar Tree Blog.
The Story of Thomas Norris and the Easter Tornado of 1913

Another Mushroom Death

Apparently mushrooms really were a threat to humanity in the early 20th century. While researching the family of Thomas Benjamin Norris (always called T.B. Norris in the newspapers), a long-time shoe magnate in Omaha, Nebraska, I stumbled on this story in the 3 August 1900 Omaha World Herald. These Norrises are no relation to the ones I've been tracing.

"Chicago, Ill., Aug 2–Three persons are dead in the home of J.A. Norris, near Harvey, Ill., and four others are seriously ill, the result of eating toadstools which they mistook for mushrooms. The dead are: Mrs. Edith Norris, Maud Norris, Thomas Norris. The others poisoned: J.A. Norris, Eva Norris, Edith Norris,Robert Smith. Thomas Norris, 12 years old, undoubtedly saved those yet alive. Half clad and suffering with pain that almost crazed him, he rode bareback to Homewood, three miles away, and fell exhausted as he reached the house of a physician. He died soon after noon, but the doctor reached the Norris home in time to save four of the seven who ate the deadly toadstools."

It sure makes one wonder about the mushrooms in the grocery stores.