Published November 1, 2020
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyMy frequent correspondent Eric “Rick” Bender always has great comments and ideas from his own research.
But now he’s expanded his market by encouraging a friend to share a tale that could be titled “you never know what you’ll find in a newspaper.”
The friend is Susan Brandt Graham of Albuquerque, N.M., and she shared an article that told the circumstances of how one of her great-great-grandfathers was killed]. “I had wondered about how it happened for some time,” she wrote. “It also told me a little bit about his personality and how he related to people.”
Graham knew almost nothing about her ancestry beyond her grandparents before three years ago, although when she graduated medical school, an aunt gave her a pair of earrings with only the name “Charlotte Spencer McKaughan.”
She knew virtually all of her living relatives lived in Texas, but when she began genealogy research in earnest, she found ancestry on both sides of her family going back to the Republic of Texas.
When her son visited a couple of years ago, he was excited about this since he’d moved to Texas in 2010. Graham knew about the Texas State Genealogical Society’s Heritage Certificate Program “That appealed to my son as much as Hot Wheels had appealed to him as a child,”
The two struck a deal: He’d pay for certificates for them both and for whatever proofs were needed if she would do the applications.
They chose as a qualifying ancestor the first of their line to arrive in the Republic of Texas, William Benjamin McKaughan, who was that great-great-grandfather whose death was reported to be a murder as well as the husband of the previous owner of the earrings.
“By that time I felt I knew a lot about him,” Graham recounted. “But I did not know how or why he was murdered. I would come across things on the Internet like ‘my great-grandmother told my mother to let sleeping dogs lie when asked for an explanation.’”
Last month, Graham came across a newspaper article from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, published in1960.
Under the tagline “I Remember,” it recounted memories of a Mrs. Joe Curlott who was a great-granddaughter of the Charlotte whose earrings Graham now has.
One section of the article, under the subheading of “Handsome Gambler,” recounted the gruesome details about William McKaughan’s death.
McKaughan would go on drinking sprees twice a year, according to the article, and return home to beat his wife. Charlotte’s brothers warned him that this conduct would lead to his death, and when a brother caught him in the act of domestic violence—he shot him dead.
Graham says she learned more than she ever expected to find.
And all because of an article in which McKaughan wasn’t the main subject and isn’t even named.
1 Comment
For Sale
The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
Brian S. Miller
4 years ago
Jim,
Newspapers.com have been a valuable asset to my research…example, finding out that my paternal grandfather, Ralph Miller had an older brother named John Edward Miller (died at the age of 8 months in 1910). That also was the case a generation before in my Miller family, my great-grandfather Raymond’s youngest brother George also passed before the age of one. Finding this was all due to doing random Miller research sweeps through the Lykens, PA newspaper. Thanks for the post Jim!