One thing our
ancestors all have in common is the simple fact that they are deceased. But the cause of death and the age vary. Some died of disease, or during childbirth;
some died of old age or a long-term physical ailment; still others were killed
by someone else, and even a few died at their own hand. I’m going to tell some of these stories. Not all of these will be direct ancestors,
and I will include their relationship to our nearest ancestor in their story.
One of the
earliest causes of death I have a record of is John WOODSON (1586-1644), my 9x
great-grandfather who was killed by Indians in Virginia. His story can be found in my previous blog,
“The Churchwell Family Tree,” published on July 27, 2020. You can read an article on the Woodson story
at https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion-article/hidden-in-a-potato-hole/
Deaths during war
time took many men. My 7x great-grandfather
Alexander DUNLAP, Sr. (?-1690) died during the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland,
when the throne of England was being sought by King James II, who was Catholic,
and his son-in-law William of Orange, who was Protestant.
Robert DUNLAP
(1740-1781), who married my 6x great-aunt Mary GAY, was a Lieutenant in the
Revolutionary War who died during the Battle of Guilford Court House, in North
Carolina.
The older brother
of my great-grandfather, Francis Marion CHURCHWELL was James Marshall
CHURCHWELL (1841-1862). He joined Co K,
2nd Missouri State Militia Cavalry on February 21, 1862, and died
six weeks later on April 4, of typhoid fever.
It is a little-known fact that two-thirds of the approximately 620,000
soldiers who died during the Civil War died not from war wounds, surgery,
gangrene or other battle-related causes, but of diseases such as typhoid,
dysentery, malaria or pneumonia. Many
POWs died of malnutrition.
We hear so often
about the infant mortality rate in past generations, and our families were no
different. My grandfather, James
Winfred LAREW (1888-1981) had two sisters who died young; Marjorie, who died at
age 10 in 1896 and Lillian (25 Jun-16 Jul 1894) in infancy; he also had a
brother Charles Garrett (1900-1910), who died young. The family story is that Garrett, as they
called him, was born without a breastbone (sternum), and as he grew his ribs
pressed in upon his heart and he died.
Valentine
VANHOOSER (1726-1781), my 5x great-grandfather, was a Tory (a supporter of the
British Crown) during the Revolutionary War; he died at one of the last two
battles in which British General Cornwallis led his troops. Records are not clear on whether he died at the
battle in Guilford County, North Carolina or Yorktown, Virginia, where
Cornwallis surrendered.
James Webb
VANHOOSER (1827-1911) was married twice, I am descended from him and his second
wife Mary WRIGHT VANHOOSER, they were my 2x great grandparents. He and his first wife, Elizabeth CANTRELL
(?-1858) had five children. The
youngest, James Pinkney (1858-1934) was born on May 2, 1858; Elizabeth died 18
days later, probably due to complications from childbirth or from an infection
as a result of delivering at home as was the practice back then. Sanitation and sterilizing of equipment was
not a common practice, since little if anything was known about germs and
bacteria.
My 3rd
cousin 2x removed, Galen STOCKTON (1903-1943) died by suicide. According to the newspaper account, “The shot
was not noticed by members of the family, and his absence was not noted until
the family arose at the usual hour, when the body was found by his wife. Mr. Stockton . . . is said to have worried
greatly of late over the discouraging crop conditions; also because his only
son, Willie Calvin, would soon be called for military service on reaching 18;
he is survived by his wife, one son, Willie Calvin, one daughter Miss Robie
Gale; his mother Mrs. Emma Stockton of Everton, a sister, Mrs. Anna Lea Bowman
and a brother Graden Stockton, both of Polk township.” Sadly, his sister Anna Lea and her husband
Austin Bowman, would die by murder-suicide as a result of a pact they had made
due to her failing health. The dates on
their grave marker look strange because they are all the same for both of them, but they are accurate; Austin and Anna Lea
were born the same day, June 5, 1912 (of course married the same day) and died the same day, September 13, 2001;
their bodies were found in their barn by their only child, Freda Mae BOWMAN
BEISNER (1932-2016).
There are a few deaths in
1918 that I wonder whether they may have been as a result of the 1918 Influenza
Pandemic. I’ll start with the oldest and
go down to the youngest. Obviously, the
older someone was, the chances are they died of another ailment, but as we hear
with COVID-19, co-morbidities can increase the risk of death with a virus. Three people in the STOCKTON family tree died
in February, 1918, one in his 70s, and another in her 60s. My 1st cousin 4x removed, Daniel
P. STOCKTON died February 23, 1918, at age 74.
In the WALLIS family, three people, aged 5, 44, and 85 passed away that
year; I would guess the 85-year-old died of other causes, but it is purely a
guess. The VANHOOSER family lost two
individuals in 1918, both in their 60s.
Amazingly, I find no LAREW or CHURCHWELL deaths in 1918.
I mentioned that my dad lost a cousin, Ross
VANHOOSER during World War II, at the age of 20. I discovered that my mother lost a cousin in 1940 under tragic circumstances. Cora Dorothea CHURCHWELL (1914-1940) was a
young child when her parents got divorced.
Her mother then married Fred STERLING, and Cora took her stepfather’s
last name, although she still spent her summers with her father, Thomas Herman
CHURCHWELL (1877-1949). Cora became a
pilot, which was very unusual in those days.
In fact, when she earned her wings at just 18 years of age in 1932, she
was the youngest female pilot in the United States. She was the secretary of Mr. John C.
Stevenson, a local Seattle attorney, and frequently piloted his plane with various
friends of his as her passengers. The
Seattle Times article, dated October 6, 1933, reported that Cora had to make a “force
landing at the ninth green of the Jefferson Park golf course.” She had on board two male passengers, a
realty dealer and a music store manager.
Apparently, the gasoline line became clogged, and she “made a perfect landing
from 2,000 feet.” She cleared the
clogged fuel line, took her passengers back on board and flew back to Boeing
Field. Apparently, she was not only a
good pilot, but also a good mechanic! In
1934, she was a stenographer for the King County Public Welfare
Department. In 1939, she was elected
president of the Associated Women Pilots of the Northwest, and in 1940, she was hired as a secretary for the
Seattle Police Department. On March 31,
1940, Cora took off in Stevenson’s single-engine, four-passenger airplane with
four young passengers, Janet Taylor, 8, and Charleen, 4, daughters of
King County Commissioner Jack Taylor and his wife, as well as their cousins Allen
Taylor, 14, and James, 10, sons of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Taylor. As the mothers and Mr. Stevenson watched the
pleasure flight, cited as a “special treat” for the children, the unthinkable
happened. According to an article in the
Monroe, Louisiana paper: “It had been in
the air 15 minutes and was about 500 feet in the air when it banked sharply and
followed a perfect arc to the ground, side-slipping as it turned.” It crashed into a lumberyard, diving into a
pile of sawdust. The gasoline tank
exploded and the plane burst into flames, with the sawdust undoubtedly adding
more fuel to the flames. Mr. Stevenson
ran to the crash scene but was kept back by the flames and collapsed. It was more than an hour before rescuers could approach the crash site due to the flames. Witness
accounts estimated the plane to be from 300 to 500 feet off the ground.
I told my husband, Craig, who has his private pilot’s license, about
the crash. Craig wondered if perhaps the
child (presumably the 14-year-old, but only a guess) in the right seat might
have accidentally or intentionally pushed on or accidentally dropped something that interfered with the pedals that control left and right banking. With her being so close to the ground, she
had little time to react with any sort of corrective maneuvers.
My uncle Richard CHURCHWELL referred to Cora’s death in a letter to his parents after one of his visits to his uncle Ben in California: “He said Uncle Herman lives up near Sacramento,
Calif. Their oldest girl got killed not
long ago in an accident. Some of the
folks back east mentioned it in a letter but he said he had not heard from Uncle
Herman, so didn’t know how she was killed." I’m sure it was much too painful for her father to write to family
about.
Cora Sterling Churchwell
1914-1940
NEXT: CEMETERIES
Comments
Post a Comment