With John Macy at Brownlee or Oxford Cemetery

Martha, who had stumbled across the Lucas Countyan while researching her family history, asked this week if I had any ideas about how to find information about her ancestor, John Macy, who she suspected had died during 1889 in Lucas County.

The family had lived in Appanoose and Wayne counties, but there was no clue there about what might have become of him --- other than a family story that he had died elsewhere in an accident. A brief online mention of a John Macy who was killed during 1889 in a Lucas County coal mining accident led her to me.

So I went first to a transcript of early Lucas County death records and, because there had been an inquest after his death, discovered an entry showing that John Macy, age 50 years and 15 days, a native of Indiana and three-year resident of Lucas County, had been killed in a fall of slate on Jan. 9, 1889, in Lincoln Township --- the township in which Chariton is located. He had been buried, according to the record, in a "cemetery nearby, 5 miles northeast."

Only one cemetery fits that description, Brownlee, in Section 21 of English Township; but Oxford Cemetery, located in Section 11 of Lincoln Township, is three miles northeast and also in range if Coroner Stanton had gotten the mileage wrong. No cemetery records to clarify this exist, but because Brownlee is so close to the description I suspect that he is buried in an unmarked grave there. The general photographs here are of Brownlee.

Then, I was lucky enough to discover a paragraph describing his death, published as follows in The Chariton Herald of Jan. 10, 1889:

"Mr. John Macy, of Lincoln Tp., was crushed and instantly killed by falling slate in a coal bank near Paul Krile's on Tuesday afternoon about 6 o'clock. A young man by the name of Smith who was working in the same bank had passed near where Macy was working with a car of coal and heard him at work. Upon returning about 20 minutes after, he heard nothing from Macy's room and called to him. Receiving no answer he went in and found him in a prostrate position under about a ton of slate. Mr. Smith went to work with all his might to remove the slate, straining his back in the operation, but found, upon succeeding, that life was extinct. Mr. Macy leaves a wife and two little girls aged eleven and thirteen years, in very destitute circumstances, to mourn the loss of an industrious hard working, kind and loving husband and father. We bespeak for them the tender sympathy and liberality of the community to lighten their sufferings in this sad calamity."

Martha confirmed that this was her ancestor and reported that the daughters, although the family was impoverished by John's death, did grow up and some 10 years after his death, his widow, Jane, remarried.