- Apparently not, although it was covered in the newspaper, the Port Gibson Reveille, at the time. Mary McFatter was the sister of my great-grandfather John Adams McFatter and the second wife of Louis Benjamin Westrope.
Louis and Mary had six young children -- Lewis Lamar, Jewel, Mattie, Joseph, Mary Lou, and the infant Nellie. In June 1902, Louis and Annie, who was his his eldest daughter by his first wife, had left Mary alone with the children at the house to go to church -- Mary had only given birth to Nellie a couple of months before, and maybe she wasn't feeling well enough to get up and about.
Mary took the five older children out to the barn and shot them one by one. She then went and lit the house on fire, burning it and baby Nellie with it. She was found running through a local graveyard and placed in an asylum. When questioned, Mary said that she had killed her children because she was terrified of her children being orphaned and some cruel fate befalling them. I mean, obviously she and her husband were very much alive, and there was no logical reason to think that her children would be orphaned and abused, but she had become deranged and I suppose her poor mind had become obsessed with this notion.
In September 1902, her husband Louis removed her from the asylum after being convinced that her sanity had been restored. He took her to a boarding house type of place in Greenville, apparently hoping that a trip would help her recover. She wrote a letter saying that she couldn't live without her children, slipped out of the boarding house, and threw herself into the river.
Louis eventually remarried and lived on until 1928. I believe his former brother-in-law, John Adams McFatter, named his son (and my grandfather) Louis after him.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
This is why I love Family History
Today, I went through my PAF looking through my list of who needed ordinances done. It's been months in the making, and I finally made it to the Westropes. I started to notice this odd trend where all of the children of Louis and Mary Westrope died in 1902. I assumed that maybe there was some epidemic, maybe a house fire, something of that nature. But, being curious, I decided to investigate so I googled "Louis Westrope 1902" and found this little pearl:
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4 comments:
Good stuff, Allana. Good stuff.
I don't even know what to say! That is crazy and incredible that you found such a story! I can't imagine what that husband had to go through. Wow. Mental illness is so hard to deal with. Wow.
Wow!! Between this and finding that Indians-put-my-ancester's-head-on-a-stake story, no one can deny this stuff is fascinating (and often depressing).
Jessica - yeah especially when there wasn't very much awareness or treatment for it. My theory is that they have the best family therapy in the spirit world and hopefully the children will understand and forgive their mother. Either way, I will be sealing them to their parents and we'll see where it goes from there! I'll be interested to see how this one works out in the eternal spectrum of things.
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