Murderer in the Family Tree

I found a murderer in my family tree, and I could not be more excited.

Sometimes when you’re digging up genealogy stories the line between shameful and thrilling can become transparently thin. But then you think, eh, these events took place over 100 years ago. Let’s engage in a little suspension of disbelieve and pretend the story is fiction and read on.

And that’s how I joyfully discovered my great, great Uncle Jimmy was a murderer, or voluntary manslaughterer, if you please.

Over a series of newspaper articles, I got a sense of what went down in August 1919. Three men were hanging out at a pool hall: Uncle Jimmy, Charles Buckholt - let’s call him Chucky Buck, and August Kernen, let’s call him Auggie. According to the paper the trio “had been around the pool room more or less all afternoon and evening.”

By the way, this particular day was a Wednesday and Uncle Jimmy was about 54 years old at the time. I guess that’s what having a “me day” looked like back then.

“Mrs. Wright who testified that she saw the men several times from her kitchen window,” noisy much? “and that all of them appeared to be intoxicated.” Well, what did you expect, ma’am?

Witnesses said that Chucky Buck was so drunk that some men helped him to a chair, but after a while he fell forward on his face. Oh, boy. Then he was picked up and placed on a bench. Did they place him in a horizontal position? Finally, he got up and wandered to a yard out back. About an hour later a fight broke out among Uncle Jimmy, Auggie, and Chucky Buck.

Afterwards Auggie wandered back into the pool hall to wash blood off himself, never a good sign, then Chucky Buck was discovered with stab wounds (!!!) and taken to the hospital where he later died, and a short while later Uncle Jimmy was found wandering around with a blood covered knife in his pocket (things are not looking good for our hero).

“How bad is he cut?” Uncle Jimmy is said to have asked the police when the picked him up. I’m guessing he didn’t like the answer to that question, not that he was sober enough to remember it.

Fast forward six months and the headline at the top of the newspaper is “INTOXICATION NO EXCUSE FOR COMMITTING MURDER. Man assumes all responsibility when he begins to drink. THIS IS DECISION OF COURT.” America had just entered Prohibition a local judge must have thought he’d hit the jackpot finding the perfect case to showcase the evils of alcohol. For his part, Uncle Jimmy claimed to remember nothing about the events of that night and several friends wrote letters to the court accounting for his good character. Ultimately, he was sentenced to three to twelve years for manslaughter and died in prison three years later.

But hold on to your sense of morality because there is more to Uncle Jimmy’s story than this.

I first found records of him in the 1880 census living with his parents, both Irish immigrants, and five siblings, with one more to come. His father, age 40, himself, age 13, and his sister Mary Ann, age 12, are all listed as working in the coal mine. His parents likely moved to America to escape the English genocide of the Irish people aka the Potato Famine. Unfortunately for them, they fell victim to the deadly greed of the American coal industry.

Back to the newspapers for another tragic story, this time looking at an issue from August 1890 under the headline “The Involuntary Homicide Case.” Uncle Jimmy’s dad, my Great Great Grandfather Charles died working in the coal mine while the elevator cage he was being lifted in shook and him and another man fell out to their deaths.

What exactly happened? Seems the company tried to pin the blame entirely on Fireman Johnny, who was operating the elevator. The court was told he only had 19 hours of sleep for the entire week before the accident, and instead of sleeping he’d spent his time picking berries. I have never heard of anyone being blamed for doing a shit job at work because he was out picking berries, but apparently that was a thing in 1890. When Fireman Johnny took the stand to defend himself, he clarified that he slept a whopping four hours a day “and that he had been berrying only one day.” So, take that!

In a show of strength that would make the suffragettes proud, the widows of the deceased men banded together and sued the coal company for damages. This was listed in a notice at the top of the newspaper. And further down on THE VERY SAME NEWSPAPER PAGE was another notice from the coal company’s directors announcing an increase in dividends. “The officers feel very comfortable about the business of the road.” I mean, really, how morally bankrupt can you get?

Thirteen days after their deaths the newspaper reported that a jury announced “We censure the Lehigh Valley Coal & Railroad Company and also Mine Inspector…[after they] did not insist on having a competent engineer, at night, to hoist men at said colliery.”

I don’t know what was actually meant by censuring the company or if the widows were able to collect any damages. The records I’ve found show that the family moved from eastern Pennsylvania to western Pennsylvania, and sometime between his father’s death in 1890 and his mother’s death in 1904 Uncle Jimmy changed his last name, perhaps to distance himself from the tragedy and being blacklisted for work.

If you were learning about this story on the tv show Finding Your Roots, this is the part where the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. narration would take over.

The tragic events of Uncle Jimmy’s early days likely stayed with him for the rest of his life. Court records show he was in and out of Allegheny County Workhouse for vagrancy and disorderly conduct. And when he was admitted to prison in 1920 for manslaughter, the list of marks and scars on his body include several references to blue coal marks on his face, possibly from mining anthracite that was dyed blue, as was practice in eastern Pennsylvania.

But throughout his ordeal, he remained close to his family. Records show him living at the home of his youngest sister Nora’s family, and when she gave birth in 1920, the same year he was convicted of manslaughter, she named the new baby Jimmy. When he passed away in 1923 in prison, the family member who signed his death certificate was Mary Ann, the same sister he had worked alongside in the coal mines when he was 13 and she was 12.

And that’s it for this week’s episode of I Found My Own Roots. Join us next time to see if we become model citizens, or if we keep fucking up.