Uncle Charles’ Murder

Misunderstanding?  Deerjacking? Bootlegging?       Murder.

It was the 1920’s, the time of Al Capone and Bugsy Segal.  Prohibition.  All across America, folks were involved in things legal and illegal.  Stories ran rampant about adventurous tales of gals, guns, moonshine, and cash.  This was no adventure but a true story:  one of my grand-uncles was murdered.

As a child, I overheard whiffs of a great-uncle dead before I was born.  As a teenager, another story hushed at a family get-together.  As a family genealogist, I discovered and read the sensational seven-page story with several days of follow-up articles regarding the death of my paternal grandmother’s eldest brother, Charles, shot twice in the chest with a rifle, supposedly over a hunting disagreement:  who really bagged the buck?

The murderer escaped across county lines and into the cover of the big city, New York.   Aunt Alice hears the news from the police and God knows how Charles’ mother, my great-grandmother Minnie, takes the news.  (This incident probably hastened her early death 2 years later at the age of 40 from heart failure and exhaustion.)  An all-points bulletin is issued and the murderer is at large.

The sole witness to the murder, Charles’ friend, Don, was also shot but survived to tell the story of the night’s events.  Searches continued for weeks resulting in finding the slayer’s getaway car, the gun but no man.  The published story runs cold after the publication of grand-uncle Charles’ funeral notice and another tragic tale folds into the annuals of history.

I never knew my grand-uncle Charles but I do know that my grand-aunt (and godmother), Leona, always teared up and grew angry when his name was mentioned.  The suspicious part of me thinks that there was more to this story than meets the eye.  It was the Depression and times were hard.  Charles did help provide for a very large family.  He might have been involved with deerjacking (they all hunted) and family rumor has it that two of my other grand-uncles (Charles’ brothers) had stills hidden in their barns.  A bootlegging operation?  Fact?  Fiction?  Speculation lingers. . . . . .

Another part of researching your family tree is that sometimes you will find stories that can be unpleasant and/or embarrassing to the family. Handling it with respect and compassion is the order for the day. Despite learning this sad tale of an untimely death, I will remember this ancestor, happy, through images of him driving his Maxwell and fishing with his father!