What do you do when you find a skeleton in the closet? The genealogist’s answer is, “Make him dance!” My mother told me the same story a few different times. My sister Maurine asked our great-grandmother for some family information. Grandma Ida gave her some names and dates, and then said, “That’s all you need to know!” Mom thought that was so odd; why would Grandma say that? Was she trying to hide something?
Fast forward many years, and I was doing some genealogy research on my Thompson line (Grandma Ida’s husband was Eugene MacWatty “Gene” Thompson, and my great-grandfather). Luckily for me, Pennsylvania is one of the states that allows older death certificates to be accessible online. While building a collateral line for Grandpa Gene’s great aunt, Jane (Thompson) White, I found a death certificate for her grandson, Albert Torrence White. Imagine my surprise when I read his cause of death, “Judicial Electrocution, State Penitentiary of Pa” [Pennsylvania]. Talk about a skeleton in the closet! Is this what Grandma Ida was trying to hide?
Albert Torrence White (whose mother called him Torrence or Torrey) died on 20 March 1922, in that Pennsylvania electric chair. Although Gene’s family had moved from Pennsylvania to Missouri in the 1870s, and then to Idaho in 1896, was there still family information flowing across the United States via letters? Gene and Torrence were second cousins. Gene’s father Thomas was a first cousin of Torrence’s father, William White of Butler County, Pennsylvania. Had Thomas not moved away from Harrisville, in Butler County, it is more than likely that Gene would have personally known Torrence.
Adding another layer to this is the fact that this Thompson branch was related to Torrence White’s wife, Sarah “Sadie” Hinkson, whom Albert murdered on 23 December 1920 (which landed him in the literal ‘hot seat’). Thomas Thompson and Sadie Hinkson were third cousins – Thomas Gormley was their shared great-great-grandfather.
In addition to the “make those skeletons dance” adage, there’s another saying, “Genealogists seek to discover those things which their ancestors wished to hide.” Oops! #52Ancestors