[quote] Me: My Great Uncle Pierre ate poison berries, then went for a very long swim. He was 23.
[quote] R171: Bipolar? Chronic depression? Broke up with someone?
[quote] R161: I’m curious what his issue was. Do you know?
Since you asked, to explain my great Uncle Pierre, I must explain his background:
His mother’s family lived in one of those Bohemian (German-Czech) utopian religious communes that were popular from at least 1717 until about 1830 in Sharon, Connecticut and nearby Dutchess County, New York.
(I just re-discovered that this family-line has a Revolutionary War veteran, making at least three among my ancestors, whoopdedo!)
Anyway, about Pierre: His maternal grandfather left the commune and moved to Brooklyn. It seems he made and lost a lot of money as a doctor/pharmacist.
So, she was raised very religious and was a little crazy. She was said to be addled because she couldn’t serve tea properly. (It was a different world, then.) My cousin speculates that the poor tea service was simply because she was raised wealthy and had servants who served tea, so she just never learned how to do it. We don’t know.
But one crazy thing for sure, is that she would wake her children at 5 am to pray. She had two children who died before age four, and “was never the same again”. One gravestone reads “Little Howard”. It’s actually very sad to see it.
The result was I had one addled spinster great aunt who I once met. Another spinster great aunt became a missionary and travelled the world spreading the Good Book. Another great uncle thought people shouldn’t have children, since the world was going to end soon with Christ’s second coming, though he, himself, had a large family. My own grandpa didn’t reject religion entirely, but was more like most others at the time, and not an enthusiast/nutcase.
Great Uncle Pierre became a missionary to the (American) Indians. He left Brooklyn and the last record I have of him is that he was employed as a “rope maker” in Denver 1895.
The story about that he ate poison berries and then drown at age 23 is family lore. The suggestion has been that it was suicide. I have no documentation of this. It doesn’t quite sound right to me, but it’s what I’ve heard. Though he died in 1895, I knew adults who knew some of my great aunts and uncles, Pierre’s siblings, as adults.
My own Dad was a community leader, kind and generous. He had that universal blood type and was one of those maximum blood donors who saved at least one baby’s life that we know of. I am very lucky to have had him as a father and that he avoided the addledness that seems to run in my family.
Little Howard’s grave is directly to the left of the dialogue box saying “I’m sorry. Ma” in the linked photo. That’s my family plot, from the oak tree on the left to the obelisk on the right of the dialogue box, in the background of this scene from the TV show, “Hunters”.
