Fractured

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"Okay I got it.  William Monroe was not convicted but there is reason and proof.  Child abuse - regular beatings, a trial of abandonment that didn't work for his son," Shannon said to me as her eyes were glued to the papers she held in front of her.

We spent hours at the library, researching every name according to the year.  Hours into this and the table we were working at with a computer in front of us was cluttered.  Laminated newspapers everywhere, books that we were able to trace any of these names in, each computer having multiple windows open, and not to mention the folder between us of all the names. 

We started with Martin and worked our way back to his family.  And with every piece of evidence we found of abuse, we added it to a new folder we were creating.  Putting in order how every person was connected, we put documents and proof in that this family does in fact have a pattern occurring throughout history. 

It started with Martin, clearly.  He was the first one, the one into uncovering all this and we were working back from him.  Since Shannon and I each took one of Martin's parents and researched them to see which one of them it was that committed the abuse, we started to get real results. She found that his mother, Margret, abused him and it was a dead end with his dad Albert so we didn't need to get involved anymore with him. And it went like that with every generation we looked into.

With every generation uncovered came great progress on our part. We leaned that Martin's mother Margret was blamed for numerous accounts of beating her child and scarring him on his back.  Since it was never proved, she didn't get busted but that was enough evidence to show Martin was clearly abused somehow - the beatings and the scars which weren't denied.

Looking into her past for the reason's why she did this to her child, why she continued this behavior, we found more reason to this growing pattern. Margret suffered from internal injuries more than twice, all from 'unknown sources.'  However, digging into her medical records, I discovered she was also a victim of rape from her father, which was a confirmed fact.  It all pointed to the obvious: child abuse and in her case, it was very severe for my great grandmother. 

Margret's father, Andrew, who raped her, had the pattern of abuse too.  He owned a farm down in Mississippi and it was reported that he had two children - Margret and Henry.  Shannon was able to pull up reports of the police uncovering Henry's body in the barn.  He was stabbed numerous times and though it was proven that Andrew killed his son, he was able to get away with his daughter and lived quietly for years later until one day, the two were recovered.  Margret was raped for years by him until she could no longer take it and snapped.  She shot her father and when she did that, that's when her story came out of her abusive childhood, one she later repeated. 

It was at this point in time it became a little tricky for us to dig deeper for the fact that, with every generation we went back, the harder it was becoming to find evidence.  Documents on anybody was hard to come by, death certificates were vague.... Shannon still was managing though because she was able to find and pull up a report on Andrew's father, looking into the reason's behind the abuse towards his kids.

"William Monroe moved him and his family down to Mississippi for work.  It's not clear why but during that time, where he lived prior, people started losing their jobs at the mills and I figure that was his best option for him."

I scooted my chair closer to her and took in the newspapers in front of her, enclosed through lamination.  The coloring of the paper and the texture of it looked more than worn or old.  We were getting back into the early 1800s now.   

The article she was looking through looked similar to all the ones before.  Most of the ones before were just mentioning members of my family.  Some were actually helpful and those ones, we kept in the folder for evidence.  However this one was in the middle.  It didn't point to a crime but rather validated why they moved.  The entire story covered people heading to look for more work and in the article, William was mentioned.  There was a little section for an example of what kind of a life he had when losing work.  It wasn't what exactly what we needed though.