Maplewood History: Cora Clamorgan – Part Five

11
89

There is still a lot of nonsense going on in the world today.  At least we can be grateful that we have transcended the sort of nonsense described in this article.  What these folks had to go through is sad.

There are still more Cora Clamorgan articles to come.  If you have missed one or all of them, here is the link to Cora Clamorgan – Part Four.  From there you can link to the first three.

Stunning weather out there today.  Things are starting to reopen.  I truly believe we are not out of the woods yet. Please be careful and wear your mask when you go out in the world.  There is new evidence that shows that wearing a mask is the most effective way to avoid being infected.

Doug Houser      June 15, 2020

11 COMMENTS

  1. what a soap opera? First the court, then get married, then have a child, he has to leave because his family says so, husband says he will come back, etc. It is now going to be 2 years before he can fulfill that promise? Will he keep it? Will he or she find another to take their place? Will someone look into the other family and find they are not as pure as they thought?

    And how did someone find this information out back then? No internet, no digital records, who has time to search the various courthouses, churches, hospitals looking for such things. I don’t think there was any DNA tracing going on so how do you prove it and find out to begin with?

    Needless to say I cannot wait for the next installment.

    • It was indeed a soap opera, Mark. An evil one. There is much more to come. You are the third person to tell me they are looking forward to the next installment. Part of the duty of being an editor is trying to avoid losing your audience due to an overload of minutiae. Really I haven’t been editing this story much at all but there is so much ahead I may have to cut it down a bit.
      Thanks for your summation. There are a lot of questions and issues that arose with this big news story of 1911.

      • Doug, one of the other interesting things to me is the clarity that the photos have. I mean this is a copy of a copy that is 100 years old. I see an attractive young woman and again wonder how does someone find out that you might have some negro blood in your veins? I do not know that much about my family history in some sense of the word and in others I have some information that goes back to Europe and the 1600’s. But I suspect that some of the “bad stuff” would have been glossed over or forgotten along the way.

        • I can’t answer your question, Mark but the answer may be found in one of the upcoming articles.
          Your suspicion that some of the bad stuff may be forgotten, I have found to be true. And that’s not hard to understand. In the historic record how much is good or bad? Who can say? Depends on who and where you are. What’s bad for some is good for others and vice versa.
          Take the McGregor family featured in an earlier blog post. There was the memory of a tragedy but not of what it actually was.
          https://40southnews.com/maplewood-history-the-mcgregor-bakery-and-the-family-behind-it/
          It was an accident that took the life of one of their children. I found the account with Newspapers.com. In this case I told the family because enough time had passed I figured it would not reopen old an old wound.
          In another case, a reader discovered that the great-great grandfather had gone to prison. I sent the information to one member of that family and left the decision to tell the rest of the family up to him.
          While researching a different family I discovered that one of the principals had committed suicide. I’m not certain if my contact in the family knows this but in this case, I’ll ask.
          Would you want to know if an ancestor of yours had committed suicide? Would you want to know if a suicide had been committed in the home you live in now? How about a murder? What about domestic abuse? All of these things I have discovered with Newspapers.com. I don’t want to know details like that about my home. Fortunately I haven’t found any.

  2. Well I think more of the young husband than I did, this is a real cliff hanger and I have enjoyed it much more than I thought I would in the beginning. I do understand the families fear of community retribution. I am glad for the CBC stand for the young student, no matter what color he is. All people are one race, we have different amounts of melamine resulting in varying shades of brown, but don’t be sad, God still loves you even if he didn’t give you very much of it.

      • According to a National Geographic magazine article I read a while back, we all have black ancestors if we go back at least 8000 years. That makes sense considering that homo sapiens is thought to come out of Africa. Both Europeans and Asians have genetic mutations that changed their skin color. The wrongs against those of different backgrounds are even worse considering how our genes all connect back at some point in time.

  3. Hi, Doug,
    Thanks for the wonderful work you have done putting this story together.
    Did you receive my check for your new book? I sent it back in May but our mail has been a little strange lately! Really looking forward to perusing the book when it arrives.
    Masks on!

    • Janet, I sent your book on May 26th. The fact that you haven’t received it yet is worrisome. I’ll try to track it. A friend told me that the post office is backlogged somehow due to the virus. Let’s hope you receive it soon. I’ll let you know if I can find out why it’s late. Thanks.

      • USPS tracking shows that Janet’s book sent the 26th of May is still in transit. It’s media mail. Maybe that is part of the reason?

Comments are closed.