Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Unusual Cause of Death

Hey, I'm actually posting this on Saturday!  It's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and this Saturday's task is to answer:

1)  What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors?

2) Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.  

I would venture to say that having one's head crushed by a railroad-yard donkey engine is rather unusual, in the grand scheme of things.  That was the cause of death of my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed [1].  The death occurred in Detroit, Michigan, 20 October 1917, two months before my mother's first birthday.  The specific cause is entered on the death certificate as "crushing injuries to head; run over by steam engine."    

My grandfather and grandmother were married 25 November 1913, and had three children [2].  The first child, my uncle Don Reed, was born seven months before the wedding.  According to my mother's sister, my aunt Margaret, the Reed family "ganged up" on my grandmother, Ruth [Nave] Reed, and took the two younger children, daughters, away from their mother and had them adopted within the family, by two of their uncles and their wives.  They would have looked down on her, following the ethos of the times, for "loose morals" in having engaged in premarital relations.  They probably also were not happy with her working as a telephone operator, as she had a mother and a son to support.  In those days, "decent" women stayed home rather than being in the workforce.  

My aunt also said that my grandmother had a sad life, and indeed she did.   You may read her story here .  Married to a woman he loved but his family didn't, with three children in a rather short span of years and the animosity of his family toward his wife, it could have been a stressful time for my grandfather as well as for my grandmother.  The one photo I have of my grandmother shows her with a sad expression on her face.  So I wonder if perhaps it all got too much for my grandfather, and in a moment of utter despair and hopelessness, he decided to lay his head down on the railroad track.  How many ways can one get one's head crushed by a railroad engine?

He could have tripped and fallen.  I wonder if any record exists with the railroad or in some other office that would have more detail?  This was before some of the more common and useful railroad records existed.  Any suggestions would be welcome. 

[1] State of Michigan, Department of State, Division of Vital Statistics, Transcript of Certificate of Death, Benjamin Franklin Reed.  Verified by Glenn Copeland, State Registrar, Michigan Department of Community Health, Lansing, Michigan, 3 April 2009.  Registered no. 10695.

[2]  "St. Joseph, Indiana, United States records," images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org /ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-LBLF-9DV5?view=index : Jan 25, 2025), image 108 of 818; Indiana. County Court (St. Joseph County).  Citing Marriage Record 1912-1913, Vol. 25, page 88.

 

The Difficult Side of Genealogy

From time to time, we come across sad stories in our genealogy.  

Such as my maternal grandmother, twice widowed while in her 20s and married a third time to an unstable ne'er-do-well.  Her first husband's family "ganged up on her," as my aunt told me, and took away her two younger children, her daughters, and adopted them within the family.

Such as a collateral relative in my mother's paternal line, who lost three children in the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic.  Her husband gave her no help at all, perhaps because he was devastated and couldn't handle it or perhaps because he was a jerk.  She divorced him, left Indiana for California and married a doctor there, making a new life for herself.

Such as my brother and his wife, who lost their daughter, my niece, to leukemia when she was 22.  Then, some 20 years later, my brother succumbed to leukemia as well.  I suspect agent orange, as my brother was a VietNam veteran, a Marine.

Such as a favorite uncle of mine, who, after a multiple-heart-bypass, committed suicide.

Handling these sad stories is difficult, when we exercise our empathy, our compassion, and look at them from the perspective of our forbears who faced such heartbreaking events.  Then it happens to us . . . 

Like my brother and his wife, my husband and I are faced with the prospect of losing a child.  Children just should not predecease their parents, but it does happen.  Our younger daughter (52 years old but still our child) has an incurable form of cancer, multiple myeloma.  It is treatable and she is in remission, but this form of cancer cannot yet be vanquished.  Knowing what is coming is like staring down the barrel of a firearm waiting for that bullet to come out and hit us.  

But it enables us to share the grief of our ancestors and relations who went through similar periods of stress, sadness, grief, and loss.  The stories we discover of how our ancestors survived such events in their lives lets us know that, battered and bruised as we may be, we can get through the hard times, the bad times, the sad times, and continue.  We continue to gather the stories of our ancestors and preserve them and the sources that document them, to pass on to our children and make them available to the wider world of family history researchers. 

The Book of Me, Written by You - #19

I'm behind on these posts, but when I got home from Pinellas Park, I got a bout of the flu.  Fortunately, I had a flu shot in October, so this round of flu was abbreviated, but I still had some nausea, temperature of 102.4, and muscle and joint aches that kept me in bed, then a couple weeks to really recover.

This prompt is "Who do you miss?"

My answer is:  Who do I not miss?  Most of my family is gone.

My father died in 1954.  I had just turned 7 years old.  I would like to have had him around longer, of course.  Genealogy has helped me learn a lot about him, though.  That has been one of the great benefits!

My aunt died in 1967, when I was in college at Florida State University.  She had helped me get there, helped me get a housing scholarship, helped me get VA benefits and Social Security benefits on account of my father's Navy service.  She helped raise me, too, from the time we moved to Florida from California after my father's death to her death.  She had a great sense of humor, and we had lots of fun.  She taught me to drive, and I would be her driver on Saturdays as she did her errands.

My grandma died in 1978.  We had fun, when I would go over to her house in the next block from where we lived, and we would sit and watch baseball games together.  She would tell me stories of her growing up in Indiana in the 1890s and 1900s.  I wish I had had the sense to record those stories.

My mother-in-law died in 1978, too.  My husband was away at the Coast Guard Reserve Training Center teaching at the time.  It was late at night when my father-in-law called with the news.  I had to get hold of the officer of the day at the training center and tell him to get my husband to call me.  Then I had to tell him the news.  He went to see the base commander, and was home the next day.  My mother-in-law also had a great sense of humor, having been raised in the country in Georgia in a large family.  She would laugh, and turn bright red.

My mother died in 1980.  It was very difficult.  During this time of all these deaths, I was working as a registered nurse. I had to quit, as it was just too much.  Mom and I had differences -- different political and social outlooks, and all that.  But we had fun, too.  One time we were on a road trip here in Florida, on an ill-maintained state road that was more potholes than pavement, and I was trying to change the radio station.  We were bouncing so much I could not get hold of the tuning knob!  We laughed at that.

A friend died at the end of the 1990s.  She lived in Illinois, and my husband and I had visited her when we attended a convention in Chicago.  We had a great time, and she and I exchanged many letters, both being interested in writing.  It was a shock when I found out she had died.

My brother died in 1996, and I still maintain he was killed by the calousness and thoughtlessness of his insurance company.  That was a horrible experience, and I miss my big brother and think of him often.

So there are a lot of people I miss.  People who helped shape me, people whose company I enjoyed.  At times I think of them, with some sadness.
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Life Events: the Experience of Loss through Death

We genealogists and family historians talk and write about all sorts of life events that occur in our families.  The event of death is often the most difficult.  Today my older daughter was once again brought into contact with that particular one.  She and her sister have dealt with such events beginning much earlier than I, as their mother, would have wished.  They've experienced the deaths of their grandmothers -- both within just a couple years of each other -- when they were very young, just on the cusp of understanding what death is and means.  As well, they have experienced the passing of two great-grandmothers and their uncle, as well as other people they have met in their time here on Earth.

My father died when I had just turned seven years old, and in those days (1954), it was thought that children did not understand at all.  That was to shortchange children, because they understand a lot more than we give them credit for.  And they're more resilient than we often give them credit for.  Certainly I was underestimated in 1954, as I was isolated and cut off from the family experience, and given no guidance whatsoever as I attempted to negotiate the frightening landscape of grief and loss all by myself.  That colored my emotional response for a long, long time, left me hostile and emotionally insecure, and made the adjustment much more long and drawn-out a process than it ever needed to be. 

When their grandmother -- my mother-in-law -- died in June of 1978, I determined that my daughters, five and six years old at the time, were not going to be left out of the loop as I was.  Likewise, when their other grandmother -- my mother -- died in 1980, I guided them through the process.  They did not need to be isolated and "protected" from the fact of death and its consequences for the living.  They needed to be kept very much in the loop, to have it explained to them as gently and honestly as possible, and to have their hands held by the caring adults in their family during that difficult time, to reassure them that life did go on, and that they would not be left entirely alone in the experience.  Considering how they have managed as young adults and now middle-aged adults, I am convinced that I did the right thing.

My older daughter heard today that one of her high school best friends died.  This is the second such event for her.  Her other high school best friend was killed in a highway accident thirteen years ago (1999).  I would have preferred she be spared that, and I would have preferred both my daughters be spared the events of their grandmothers -- and since then, other family members -- dying.  But we are not granted such requests.  We are charged with reacting compassionately and responsibly to these events.  It is demanded of us that we go through the steps of the grieving process, and it is hoped we take comfort where we can, and emerge from the experienced strengthened in faith and courage.

I think my daughters have been prepared well, and I'm proud today of my older one for the way she has handled the news, of my younger one for the caring she showed, and of my son-in-law for being my older daughter's strength, both times.
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A Child's Questions About Death

The other day, my husband sat with our 6-year-old grandson while Mommy went to pick up Daddy from work.  Grandson asked grandpa about death.  He asked if grandpa would die, and grandpa said that, yes, he would, someday, and that it is just another part of life.  Grandson also asked if his mommy and daddy would die, and grandpa said, truthfully but kindly, that yes, they would, someday.  Then grandson asked plaintively, "Who will take care of me?"

Grandpa answered that by the time any of this happens, grandson will have grown and learned to take care of himself and of others, too, as he will most likely have a family of his own; but that for right now, we are all here and we all will take care of him, and teach him how to take care of himself.

Grandson seemed satisfied with that, and the bottom line there was his worry about being cared for.  He asked the questions quietly and without fear, but with a legitimate concern in mind.  Grandpa answered truthfully and kindly.  His curiosity and concern satisfied, grandson then turned back to the more usual concerns of childhood -- play.