From my little research I did on those anchored prison ships a couple of years back, your ancestor was a tough mofo to survive it. The conditions on those things were disgusting.
Sigmagirl, he was sentenced to 15 years, but he must’ve gotten early parole or appealed or something because he was out by 1934. I really want to know the details of this case; does anyone have access to the relevant edition of the Southern Reporter and willing to summarize it here?
Scarlett67, the surname is probably a corruption of McFadden from way back. It’s also found in colonial records spelled McPhater.
Here’s a description of the conditions at Oakley State Farm and Hospital, as detailed in the 1919 Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the American Prison Association:
My personal favorite is still when my dad was taking a trip to Ireland, and scheduled a tour of ruined castles. So, he decided to look 'em up, see why they were ruined.
One of them, apparently, a cousin-who-stayed-behind ruined. See, he was drunk and lit it on fire.
With his mother-in-law inside.
Sums up family history pretty nicely, all things considered.
Unless things have changed recently objects are “hung” but more typically a person is “hanged” (as is supported in your cite). Eg/ “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care”. But the “murder was hanged by the nooseman in the town square.”
Game is hung, people are hanged (although you’ll find plenty of examples of it in contemporary journalism).
‘Injuncted’ is another one that annoys me. Ain’t no such verb. An injunction enjoins you to or from a course of action.
The events sparking the Salem witch trials actually took place in Salem Village - now Danvers, MA - a fact which Salem, MA naturally wishes to gloss over.
My great-great grandfather, from Germany, enlisted in a New York unit called the Fifth German Rifles in the Civil War. He was captured in the regiment’s first skirmish with the enemy, on outpost duty near Annandale Virginia just outside of Washington DC when Confederate cavalry rode through the lines and took 8 prisoners. He spent 6 months in POW camp, caught tuberculosis, and was invalided out when he was released in a prisoner exchange.
A few years ago I read some of the official correspondence on the skirmish. One of the officers in the next regiment over complained about the Germans because when the Confederates rode through their lines none of them even fired a shot. He also remarked that he though there had been a “rather free use of spirits” among the German troops.
So it turns out my great-grand father was probably captured because he was too drunk to get out of the way of the rebel cavalry.
My family is full of 'em. My siblings and I have varying degrees of OCD, learning disabilities, etc.
Paternal grandmother was a con-artist of sorts who referred to her kids by nickname. Mom was the product of a ne’er-do-well and a woman who was subsequently institutionalized; Mom was raised by an aunt, who was also taking care of her 90-year-old grandfather. Mom was rather difficult to find on the 1930 census due to being listed under her middle & first names rather than her last & first. IIRC, her relation to the head of household is ambiguous on the census as well.
Well I don’t think it is as bad, but some will, but we discovered my Great Uncle was a Black and Tan. And more recently we are pretty certain some of the more distant cousins who live in the North have links to some less than savory loyalist “social clubs.”
I was just nosing around on Ancestry.com and found out that my paternal grandmother’s father married his deceased wife’s sister after the first wife died! That was weird…“Mabel Weierick…Mabel Weierick…wait…PEARL Weierick?!” Mabel died in 1930, and the first child great-grandad had by Pearl was born in 1934. So apparently there was at least some suitable period of mourning.
It was. My grandfather was there for a time - I never knew him, he died long before I was born, and Daddy ended up in the Baptist Orphanage, where the man I know as my grandfather adopted him when he was 12.
