The Black Sheep in the Family

Reconstructed Rebel

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Jun 7, 2021
Discovering just how many of my CW relatives were marked as deserters at one time or another has been educational for lots of different reasons, but I'm proposing a thread here where we acknowledge the black sheep in our families. Most of us, I think, like to comb through the family tree and pick out people we can brag about, at least to our children. But we know they weren't all saints. Here's some of my sinners....

My great-grandmother as a child carried breakfast and supper each day for a week to her uncle who was hiding out at the back of the farm because he was wanted for stealing horses. He managed to get away from the sheriff in Kentucky and safely made his way to Kansas, but he kept stealing horses. He was finally caught red handed. He was tried, convicted, his appeal rejected, and the sentence of hanging from the neck until dead carried out. These last four events all together were said to have taken not more than 15 minutes. They say you shouldn't mess with Texas, but I don't think you should fool around with Kansas either.

Our grandson was given an assignment this spring to write about a direct ancestor associated with an event in history and I gleefully collected all the stories he could be proud of. His choice, however, was the unfortunate 13 times great grandfather who was one of the few survivors of an situation where recent archeological excavations have pointed to wide spread cannibalism among the survivors. The title of his class presentation was "I May or May Not Be the Descendant of a Cannibal." But he got an "A" so that's something I can brag about!
 
Not the Donner Party. Let's just say of the 600 people in the settlement at the beginning of winter only 60 were alive to welcome spring. Evidence points to a lot of grave robbing and not for medical research. This is a case where the skinny people no doubt died first.
But enough about my wonderful family, what is your best (worst) family story??
 
My husband has two murderers and an embezzler in his family. As someone said recently in another thread - the bad guys in the family are so much easier to research!
So did they claim self defense or temporary insanity? A German ancestor of mine was said to have been the town treasurer, but he stole money to pay for passage to America for himself and his rather extensive family. What is the story of your embezzler?
 
He was the long time trusted head clerk at a bank. Then he developed a gambling habit. He only meant to "borrow" the money, as many say, but then he couldn't win at the tables to pay it back. A routine audit found the discrepancy and the bank president at first didn't believe it was my guy. But it was. The worst part was how it affected his family. He had two daughters who moved in society but after the scandal neither married and they ended up almost destitute. They took the father in after he got out of prison but had so little money that the youngest ended up dying in the county poorhouse.
 
He was the long time trusted head clerk at a bank. Then he developed a gambling habit. He only meant to "borrow" the money, as many say, but then he couldn't win at the tables to pay it back. A routine audit found the discrepancy and the bank president at first didn't believe it was my guy. But it was. The worst part was how it affected his family. He had two daughters who moved in society but after the scandal neither married and they ended up almost destitute. They took the father in after he got out of prison but had so little money that the youngest ended up dying in the county poorhouse.
That's like a novel.
 
But enough about my wonderful family, what is your best (worst) family story??
I'm sorry to say, I know very little about any of my ancestors beyond my g-grandparents. But (as I've mentioned elsewhere) if 23andMe is to be relied upon, my ancestors probably included a slave and a slave owner, since I'm supposedly 1.2% sub-Saharan African.
 
Article about the murder committed by Margaret Stewart of Clinton, Mississippi, my G-G Grandmother's sister. My G-Grandfather had to testify at her trial.

The_Weekly_Democrat_Wed__Oct_30__1872_ (1).jpg
 
A bizarre case of hysteria. I wonder how much the loss of the son in the War affected the parents and brought this on.

Probably a great deal. John was reportedly his mother's favorite. He was wounded and captured during the Petersburg breakthrough. He died in Federal custody.

Sally Land's husband's Confederate service record shows an unusual amount of times he reported being sick prior to Gettysburg. On at least one of those occasions, the cause is listed as "syphilis". He was furloughed home for some time to recover from wounds received at Gettysburg. Following the war, he lived a fairly long life in California. I'm not making excuses for such a terrible deed, just stating the "rest of the story". I'm aware of how the disease is usually spread, but I've read that poor hygiene can also contribute. It doesn't surprise me that even in 1869 a New York newspaper can pronounce the cause being "ignorant hillbillies having too much Church". They say the gangster Al Capone had the mind of a small boy before he died of syphilis. Just saying.
 
Isolated, grieving, overcome by a religious fervor. And it's possible that they were malnourished or otherwise undermined by disease. Hard to know. But a very sad story.
James Eli Land (1851-1939).jpg


This is one of the sons mentioned. James Eli Land, (1851-1939). He and my great-grandfather were 1st cousins and resemble enough to pass for brothers!

My great-grandparents, James Linville & Cynthia Cox Land. He came to East Tennessee about 1870, right after the incident. Everyone agrees the two James resemble?

James Linville and Cynthia Cox Land.jpg
 
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My 2x great grandfather Thomas R. Lamm who fought with the 43rd NC Infantry during the Civil War would probably be the blackest sheep in my family line. He married a woman named Nancy Thorne shortly after the Civil War and started a second household with her sister raising nineteen children in two different households. Besides bigamy he also killed a man after an argument as the attached newspaper article describes. He became very wealthy running several successful businesses in Wilson County, North Carolina. He sold horse buggies, was the postmaster of his community at one time, ran a cotton gin, owned thousands of acres of land he rented to sharecroppers, owned a general store and established a church in a one room schoolhouse that was named after him. He was put on trial for the killing of Eatman but he was acquitted. He did pay the widow of the man he killed a cash settlement for his part in this incident. He survived his pistol wound, dying in 1915 at the age of seventy four.

T. R. Lamm1 Feb 1898.jpg
 
Isolated, grieving, overcome by a religious fervor. And it's possible that they were malnourished or otherwise undermined by disease. Hard to know. But a very sad story.
Sheriff Hiram Washington Mays & Wife
Alexander County, NC

Sheriff of Alexander County, NC. from 1866 to the mid-1880s. He was the sheriff that arrested James & Jinney Land & their sons for the murder of Sally.

Hiram Washington & wife.jpg
 
A bizarre case of hysteria. I wonder how much the loss of the son in the War affected the parents and brought this on.
I think the most logical culprit here is something in their diet. It would be basically unheard of for an entire family to suddenly exhibit this level of psychosis due to a shared underlying mental condition. And the husband and wife were not blood relatives. A compound in moldy rye bread is suspected of being the cause of the hysteria in the Salem Witch Trials. http://www.bonappetit.com/entertain...crop-might-have-caused-the-salem-witch-trials
Any number of foods can cause hallucinations in people and lasting damage to the brain. I think this family was eating something that was poisonous to their mind.
 
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