so how y'all doing today? i'm bill merchant, the deputy director for collections, historian and curator here at the dna technology oracle society. and i welcome you for tonight's presentation. you must be some of the not some of the 46,000 people without power. i think i got that number right.

so thank you for for coming tonight. and i know mike's a great historian. we're going to have mike warden is going to present unleashed by a mob. and so without any further ado. my lord. thank you. thank you. i do appreciate you coming out. it's been a stormy day. it's been a stormy evening already. so thank you for getting here. and i'm going to talk to you about a pretty tragic event from 1890 to port jervis new york. i mean, it's, what, 43 miles from here. so most people are probably familiar with the area, at least. and we were connected by the canal. so there's a strong connection between different communities here. and just quickly, with my background, i'm a retired police officer. i did 22 years, started as a patrolman. i was promoted to detective after six and a half years. i did that for almost nine and a half years. and then i spent the rest of my career promoted to sergeant as a uniformed sergeant on the night shift, and i retired in june of 2021 to pursue other things, including my writing, and to hopefully finish this book, which was one of my goals.

and i did accomplish that, as we can see. so we're going to talk first about my book, and it did win two awards this year so far. one, the true crime category in both the ippy awards, which is the independent publisher book awards and the next generation indie book awards. so it was recognized by two different organizers, asians for true crime. so it's quite honored to have that distinction and to have other people read the book and kind of take that value away from it. you know, i'm biased with how good i think it is, but it's nice to see other people think is too. so when i told this story and when i write about a true crime, it's easy enough to just write about the facts that this is what happened on this day. okay. that's not as interesting. i want to tell the whole story. not just the night of the lynching, but the aftermath and the people involved who were they? i spent four years digging through old documents, going to the orange county courthouse and sifting through boxes of old court records. i was lucky to find records that

had never been used by researchers before. before i had put this book together at the end of my sources, combined with 635 different sources. i was my mind was blown because, you know, as i'm writing it, the last thing i did was the bibliography. and i'm like, wow, i started counting. and i'm like, i had to keep writing down where i was because i couldn't believe it. the book is 444 pages long. that sounds scary. a bulk of the book is the backwards like and notes bibliography. there's an appendix and there's a lot of illustrations. 178 of them. photographs, maps, things like that, because it's one thing to hear the story and hear about the people involved. but when you see their photograph and you can look at them on the page, this is the person they're talking about. or you can see the newspaper rendering of them. you can you know, puts a face to the name and, you know, i spent a chapter on the race relations in portugal, us, and there was no way around the offense of racist language of 1892.

and in the decades before that. and i made a tough decision. i consulted with a lot of historian, ins, educators and academia. and my conclusion was to not censor the original primary sources. if i was quoting them. and that was a consensus with everybody i spoke to. so i did put a little bit of warning because, you know, what was printed in newspapers as regular course of business just a little over 130 years ago is extremely offensive when compared to our sensibilities today. so i do like to warn people about that. i won't be going into a lot of that today. now, i have a long time interest in this story because of a family connection. my great great grand aunt was mary jane clark. mary jane clark was my grandmother's aunt was her mother's half sister. mary jane clark was one of the women working at a heart factory on june 2nd, 1892, who here's the sexual assault that we're

going to talk about that precipitates the lynching. she tends to the female victim and had talked about this. my grandmother heard the story from her aunt jennie, and of course, that i had heard it from my grandma. and what really was the the final push to do the book was was that my grandma's house? and she was going through her her family information, which was a big manila folder of just stuff stuffed in it. and she was going to show me something else in a newspaper article. was there from 1985, which talked about her great aunt or my great aunt mary jane, and the lynching. and she says, you know, michael, john, you should really write about this because you do a good job. now, the trick there was she used my middle name, john, that meant this isn't really a request. it's not really a recommendation. this is an order. you know, there's ten commandments and then there's grandma's number 11 penciled in and i said, you know, you're right. i thought about doing that over the years. controversial topic. i didn't know how to tackle it, but i thought, you know what,

let me start the research and i'll just see what direction it takes me in. so i'm glad she pushed me. unfortunately, she passed away before the book was done, but i did dedicate it to her. hmm. and it's a complicated story to tell. and you're going to see why it's complicated as we get into this story, because so much is involved. it's not just the people. it's the complex aftermath. it's just inability to hold anyone accountable, even though someone's lynched in front of hundreds and hundreds of people, all from the same community, people that knew each other. so i looked at it in big chunks. and this is as a as a criminal investigator for all those years, when you look at a criminal case, you have to look at it, you know, through the microscope. and then you have to get the big picture, you know, in a big credit to how i do my research. so the lynching is at the center june 2nd, 1892. this horrible event occurs. but who were the people involved? what happened leading up to the lynching? was there a sexual assault?

what about the apprehension? how do they catch the guy they believe conducted this assault and what leads to him being lynched? how did the mob get him into their hands and what happens during the lynching? what were the details? the lynching is bad enough, but the details that led up to that lynching, the beating, the kicking, the dragging him by the rope around his neck are absolutely terrifying. the legal inquiries, the grand jury, the coroner's inquest. how come no one is held accountable? people say who was involved? they sit there in a room at the coroner's inquest and say he was there. but yet nobody is held accountable. so the context really quickly, just to put port jervis 1890 to there was about 150, 160 african-americans living in the community, a large percentage of them lived in a squatter's

community outside the village border. it was called the hollow, had some other names that were very offensive, but there was a lot of african-americans that lived and worked in town. they owned property. they owned homes. they one of them was working with a doctor as an apprentice before he went to medical school for a year. so port jervis was probably very typical of most communities in they were have really considered themselves racist. they certainly looked down on the african-americans that lived on the fringes of the community, but they also looked down on the white people that lived out in that community as well. it really boiled down to wealth versus your skin color to a lot of them. if you were poor and you were living outside of town, you didn't work. you were going to be scorned no matter who you were. and there's a lot of newspaper articles that go into that. so the african-americans in the community never there never was a lot of problems. i couldn't find any evidence of that. the schools were never segregated. so african-american kids and

white kids, they were all going to school together. so there's no evidence that port jervis is was segregated in any way other than economically by by circumstances. and, of course, lynching in the north was rare. in the south, it was common and became an instrument of terror after the civil war, in particular, as african-americans, you know, the freed slaves went out and, you know, gain the right to vote and things like that became part of the community. so and it's not the only lynching in orange county. there was one other one in 1863 in newburgh, new york, very similar circumstances. of course, 1863 is the draft riots in new york city. this precipitated it. but i think it was sort of a a microcosm of the bigger problem that the draft riots were later going to become. so port jervis has the distinction of the only lynching post 1865 post-civil war. so the people involved three people, and this is where it

gets a little confusing because we have lena mcmann at the top. lena mcmann is our victim of the sexual assault. and we'll talk a little bit about the you know, we have robert lewis. he's the man who is lynched for his alleged transgression against lena mcmann. and then we have p.j. foley, who is one of lena's suitors, if you will, a spurned lover who is accused of instigating the sexual assault. so let's talk first of all, robert lewis. first of all, early on in my research, i realized that's not even his name, robert lewis wasn't his name. the man's men remembered by an alias for a hundred and something years, 30 years at this time. his real name was robert murray. he was born around 1863, on the outskirts of port jervis. he was a local man. it adds another dimension of terror to this. his parents were henry jackson and anna mcbride. henry was from the works barrow area. his family.

henry was a civil war veteran. he served in the 26 u.s. colored troops in company b, i think. and had been in the area for a long time. these were local people. so i was one to point out the men who murdered robert lewis. they knew him and he knew them, you know, even if he didn't know their names, he was still a familiar face. they may not have known who he was, but he was known to them. so this is a very intimate, very personal criminal act that occurred on that night. and he lived most of his life in port jervis for a while. he had a job as a bus driver for the delaware house, was one of the nice hotels along the erie railroad by the depot and as a bus driver, he would cross the i think there was like 13 or 14 different tracks at the beginning of a busy yard. by the way, whoever put the crossing where the yard was. didn't make a lot of sense. but he would drive across that or the depot, pick up the people going to the feller house and drive them over. that's a pretty responsible job.

you're the face of the feller house. you has to be somewhat of a likable character. otherwise, why would you send them? why would you send someone that's not friendly, not polite, not, you know, entertaining to be around if he's going to scare your customers away and they're going to go to one of the other dozen hotels that they could go to. so i like to think he was he wasn't a bad guy. there was no evidence to suggest he was a criminal or prone to criminal behavior, except for one little hiccup he had in his life. and we might talk about that before june 2nd, 1892. he just looked like most other people. he went about his business. his final hours were horrible and he was innocent till proven guilty. and so he was never convicted or charged with a crime related to the assault on lena lee mcmahon is really a forgotten victim in this whole tragedy because after the lynching, the sexual assault kind of gets briefly covered

because it wasn't important anymore. the man who committed the assault was it was determined robert lewis. he had been hanged. case closed. there's no reason now to investigate the sexual assault. lena mcmahon's life after june 2nd, 1892, is tragic. and i wanted to tell her story because no one else had been able to really follow her in the years after that. she's born around 1868 in new york city. she came to live with mcmahon's around 1875 or 76 in port jervis. she was adopted by john mcmahon and theresa reilly, both irish immigrants that came over during the famine. john was a local glassblower. there was two big glassworks, one right on the canal and port jervis on glass street, where they had a big a big factory. there. when we were kids, we used to dig on the side of the hill and pull out the old glass, i guess slag and stuff. the big colored rocks of glass, which we thought were treasures, found out they were worth

nothing. very disappointing. but she's a very pretty, very smart young woman. she's a graduate of the port jervis academy at a time when not a lot of people graduated. you only had to go to school till you were 14. and most of the graduates were women, except for a couple of years where you had a lot of men. and she operated a confectionery on kingston avenue in port jervis. she had ice cream and sold candy and stuff like that. very pleasant. very well liked in the community. and on june 2nd, 1892, her life completely gets turned upside down and is never the same again, and largely it might not be the same again because of mr. foley. pj foley is really a man of mystery. i don't use that phrase lightly here because first of all, no one knows what his real name is. he's always referred to as pj. is it philip? is it peter? sometime it's written as both. sometimes you'll see in a document he's listed as philip jay foley of the times. peter jay foley was two

different names going on here. he's from massachusetts and he's a insurance salesman who had come to port jervis by trade. he was a machinist and just as a side note, when i was trying to track down who he could be, i knew he was from warren, massachusetts. and that area, the number of people using initials for foley. pj i'm like, how many people have the same name? the newspaper talked about his brother, who went by j.p. like, this is not original people. this is not easy. so i never really did get to the bottom of mr. foley because at some point the book wouldn't get written if i kept you know, i had to i had to put the white flag up on foley. but i'm okay with that for now. and what's he? a scoundrel? was he a scapegoat? did he put robert louis up to rape lena mcmann because that's what the allegation becomes in the days after the assault on lena. so on june 2nd, i like this quote from the port jervis union

thursday evening. june 2nd is a date that will go down in local history as marking the most disgraceful scenes that were ever enacted in the village of port jervis, if not in orange county, they could have added in the state of new york and the united states because it really was. and the you know, the union was one of the papers condemned it, but then also sort of didn't condemn it. i'll get to that a little bit. so they have a toxic relationship. lina meets foley, who is described as a handsome, young, good looking man, a little bit older, comes across as worldly. he's an insurance salesman, comes up from new york city. he's selling insurance from the big city. and his her parents were okay in the beginning until he gets arrested for defrauding an innkeeper and does a short stint in the county jail. now, he's not good enough for lina. her parents won't let them see each other. that was we know that doesn't really keep them apart.

and they keep their relationship going, have clammed after meetings. you know, she sneaks out of the house to be with him. he's, of course, not allowed near the house, but he manages to meet up with lina whenever they can. and there's allegations that he starts blackmailing her for money because he loses his job as an insurance salesman. he's a drinker. at least that's one of the descriptions of him, is he's a drinker. so there's allegations of extortion, blackmail, and he's basically telling lina, i'm going to ruin your reputation if you don't give me money, i am going to tell the community things about you that no one will ever look at you the same again. so he's certainly implying that there might have been a sexual relationship between them and he was going to somehow get that out. of course, the newspapers at the time never say that, but they always dance around the the language but get they'll they'll drop the n-word in headlines in newspapers like it was nothing but they won't print -- they'll use g dash t dash but they'll

use all types of racial slurs and it's it's baffling to see it because it's so different than what we would see today. and it's not that long ago. so in the days before june 2nd, lena goes to new york city. she takes the train from port jervis. she's going to go visit friends. and there are two very different accounts of what happens. lena claims that she goes down to the city, she goes to ask for a drink of water and a unsavory looking bar. and the next thing to remember is it's like a day later and she's in port jervis again, has no recollection how she got there. peter vole or pj peter philip, on the other hand, accounts for everything she did. she went to the city, she came back, they met up, they spent the night together. and then on the next day when she came back june 2nd, lena was going to leave port jervis and go to boston, where she had other family and pj is going to help her get her stuff because she's a nice guy. so they're going to spend the morning together and it's a beautiful june day.

and lena is going to leave port jervis and there's an area called the fairgrounds. it's in the area where the port jervis high school is today. and she's down there sitting at a tree, reading a book and foley decides, i'm going to go get some sandwiches. and the o and w passed by there used to be the port jervis middletown and port jervis monticello railroad, i believe, at that time, not the old w there, but it crossed right through there. he takes the train down to the erie and gets some sandwiches and he leaves lena there all by herself. there are witnesses to everything that happens next and that is lena sitting and watching. reading her book, it's a beautiful day. she's sort of by herself and suddenly an african-american man identified as robert louis or robert jackson or robert murray essentially assaults her in broad daylight with people watching. there's kids fishing right there. there are the ladies at the harness factory that are having their lunch outside who witness

some of this. so to put it in perspective. anybody from are you familiar at all here? okay. so this is a little bit of an aerial map, and that's hamilton street in port jervis. and that's the never seeing river. so you kind of get an idea where we are. this is gwinnett field, which is the it was at the middle school where port jervis high school football games were played. and that's a brook called cold brook. you can't really see it that greatly. but there's a brook that was, i believe it was one of the reservoir runoffs. and it ran right into the never sink river. and right there near the mouth of that brook is where the sexual assault courage i've been. i went down there many times. we used to fish down there as kids. there had been a junkyard and subsequent years, there's nothing to to really identify a specific location because of flooding. it's changed so much. but at that time, a lot of the

houses wouldn't have been there. so that would have been sort of on the outskirts of the village where you didn't have a lot of people. so after lena's assaulted, pj foley is seen hiding in bushes, watching one of my my great aunt jenny is one of the witnesses to that. she testifies later on. and one of the things she would have testified about is what she saw him hiding in the bushes, watching the assault from a hill. so clearly he is putting himself at the scene of the crime, even though he's supposed to be getting sandwiches after the assault. lewis travels towards where the high school is today. at the time, it was rye fields quarterback's farm and the search immediately commences once his name is circulated. so at the time, the local police were very limited in their role they had no horses in carriages, certainly wasn't any cars at the time there. and the police role was mostly

as a peacekeeper. they all had foot patrols. so when you were a cop, you had a certain beat, a section of the port jervis. if you were responsible for another cop, had another section, especially downtown, where you had the railroaders, the bars and the brothels. that's where you needed the police. and they carried a billy club, a pistol and a whistle. and i'm not sure what else. probably a little book of rules and regulations or maybe laws. police officers were hired based upon who was in power the village board would be voted in in march. they would elect your new president and village board in april. the village board would convene and then they would vote on who's going to be cops. so if i'm the village president and i'm a republican and i like these three people, i'm going to push for my three friends to be cops. now if i get defeated next year. and my democratic rival who wins kicks in. well, he doesn't like those three republican. so now he's going to bring in three other cops.

so that's how they selected their police. and they did the same thing with chief after they voted in the cops. okay. which one of the five or six are we going to make a chief? and then they would take ballots amongst themselves. and what we got the most votes. congratulations. you're the chief of police. no civil service test. no. require permits. just complete political patronage. so we're not talking about a trained police force going out, looking this fell to civilians and the civilians that go out there are man named saul cali, who a neighbor of the mcmahons. you have a man named stuart horton walter coleman. and they start going out and just asking questions, where have you seen this guy? you know, basically doing police work, whether or not cops know. the man named john dougherty, who's a young man, also goes out and their goal is to arrest lewis, bring him back to port jervis to face justice. these men don't start out with the intent of taking the law

into their hands. their intent was from the beginning. they're going to bring robert lewis to port jervis, turn him over to the police, and he is going to be held accountable for the accusations against him and they do manage to track him. they track him to the drainage canal where he gets on a canal boat and starts heading up towards huguenot, new york. so, of course, they split up. you know, one of the men, they get on the towpath and they're going to walk and catch up to the vote because they only went, what, three miles an hour. so a brisk walk. you're going to overtake the boat and the carriages ride up to huguenot so that you're kind of keeping a circle here. you're moving in on them and the two men actually catch up to the boat. they jump onto it, and they see robert lewis, and he knew them by name and face and they knew him and they exchanged some words, nothing about the the alleged offense. and when they get to huguenot, there's a bass and they basically jump on him and grab him and say, you know, we want

we want you. we're here for you. and there's a struggle. they managed to get him off the boat. there's a crowd there who attempts, according to some reports, threatens still lynch him at huguenot. but they're able to get him on a carriage and start the ride back to port jervis. on the way back, louis is seated in the front of a wagon. he has saul kali and seward haughton on either side of them, and behind him he has john doty, so he's surrounded by three white males. he confesses to the crime. now, today, under those circumstances his arms were tied behind his back. his feet were tied together. that would be an extremely coercive environment for a confession. but what he adds in there is he says, yes, i did it, but because foley told me i do it. it's okay. so the implication is that foley told him she would be game to have a sexual encounter, but she likes to pretend she likes it

rough. that's the only way she'll do it. but it's okay. you can do it. you're not really doing anything wrong. so that's the confession he makes to the two males that he's writing with. and that's a confession he unfortunately never got to tell officially to any authorities because they killed him before. he does, in my opinion, upon extensive police work, he was probably telling the truth because clearly and horton would have no reason to make that up at the time, it would be easy to say they made up that he confessed and oh yeah, he said he did it. but to throw in a very specific detail about foley, then you had the witnesses who put foley at the scene of the crime. you start to get into what i think is probably a pretty reliable confession at that point. there's no way to let the authorities know he's coming. so there's no telephone in the area that can that can be relayed. there must not have been a telegraph office maybe in huguenot or they didn't think to let them know. and the men have been out of

town for hours they have no idea what's going on in port jervis. you know, we take for granted we have a cell phone. we were never disconnected from anything. you know, back then you were in huguenot, something going on five or six miles away in port jervis. you didn't know anything. so they're coming back to port jervis pretty blind. i don't really blame them for what they did. they thought they were doing the right thing. unfortunately, they didn't realize there's a frenzied mob already gathered at the erie railroad station, and that's because rumors are flying through town that robert louis had been arrested in otis ville and he was coming in on the orange county express train. the passenger. so people gather at the erie depot with the intent to drag him off the train and lynching. that's what they're there for. the president of the port jervis in monticello railroad has foresight to realize this. he telegraphs it has the train has been put on a freight train

after the orange county express and then has the freight train stop on the edge of port jervis, and they get him off into a hotel room. i think by then they've realized they've got the wrong man when the orange county express passenger train comes the port jervis and you have this mob and they realize he's not on it, they believe he's been brought to the orange county jail and they are talking about going to the orange county jail to bust him out, pulling him. this is the level of of, you know, anger and frustration that this crowd was willing to vent. and by killing somebody, the jail in port jervis at the time was on sussex street behind a firehouse, had a long corridor from the street, basically was like an alley. and in the very back tacked on to it was what they call the the sussex street dungeon was like a two story metal jail which was unfit for human habitation. and so their goal is they got to get him to in front of the jail and they have to it's where allison's is today. if you're ever in port jervis allison's pharmacy, they're

going to turn him over. and by the time they get the port jervis and they get along, they get to within in front of the jail, they drive into a mob which has just been waiting in the whole area, and they drive into this mob and they get out. there's immediately a big rush to the wagon. they try to get lewis out of the wagon. they untie his legs so they don't untie his hands. so they managed on tie his leg. so his feet are no longer bound together. but from this moment on, for everything that happens to him, his hands remain tied behind his back, which is another level of terror that gets heaped on through the injustices to him that night. so this is a really quick map of port jervis just to sort of set the stage on how it would have been. so there is where the jail was located. it just tacked on the back of that. that host company. and that's what the host company

looked like. and then there's like a little door that was the door to the the alleyway that led to the jail. and then there'll be another iron door at the end where you would open up and actually go into the jail and then have the cells. this is hunts hospitals, right there in the corner that plays a role in the events that night. mm hmm. and that's the view of the area today that sort of piece of vacant lot kind of overlapping slightly. so the building is where the jail or the well, where were the firehouse would have sat in a jail behind it. this is a very busy area of port jervis and i always, as i was doing this work and realized how much happens here, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people a day are in and out of this. the post office banks, albertson's. there's restaurants and have no idea what played out. just hundred and 30 odd years

ago right there on the sidewalks and on the road in front of them. it's an incomparable, incomprehensible horror. his hands were behind his back. he seized, and as he dragged them off of the wagon, he's immediately subjected to violent beatings. he's he's kicked he's dragged basically anybody that could get close enough to lewis was inflicting some type of violence on him. the police are doing whatever they can to try to keep him in their custody. one of the officers at the time, a man named simon sipple, did everything he could in his power and really goes down as one of the few heroes that night that tried to stop the lynching. he does manage to get a hold of him. another officer who is off duty, william, he manages to step up. he tries to do what he can. but these are just a few men against a handful of the mob. the village president. he's there where this is

happening. he rode right ahead to try to tell the mcmahons that they're going to come here because mob decides. let's take them to get identified before we hang them. let's make sure we got the right guy and then we'll hang them. so, you know, what was your joke after a fair trial? we're going to shoot you so the village president, he drives up to say, listen, if they come here, just say it's not him. we'll deal with it later. but just tell the mob it's not him. even if it is him. and for nearly a half a mile, he's dragged, beaten, kicked. at points he's dragged dozens of yards by the rope around his neck, being pulled as he's on the ground, being pulled through the dirt, the rocks, by the time they even get to the tree, he's almost naked. he's bleeding. he's in and out of consciousness at different times. i mean, what wrote the book? i broke it down, basically. it's almost like a minute by minute and very much detail what

could happen really based upon what the available sources say. and it's, in my opinion, as close as we can get to witnessing that event without actually being able go back in time and seeing that we have officer gable simon able, again, a hero who tries his best to do what he can. william bonner, another man for all their efforts, the rope gets thrown around their neck. people strike them. people threaten to shoot them again. these are local people threatening to shoot other local people. the village president, obadiah howell dr. halsey hung i showed you the picture of the hospital. he hears this commotion outside and comes out and then realizes beaten robert lewis and they're threatening hang him and he tries reasoning like listen let the law you're about to do something worse by killing him. let the law take its place. benjamin royal, the managing director of the port jervis monticello railroad. he tries a reverend hudnut, who tries to intervene from one of

the churches again. they threaten the lynched a reverend, you know, very respected civil war veterans who step up at the scene where they're about the lynching, you know, shut up a you're going to be next. orleans, your next again, these are local people saying this to other local people. so they drag him beating, kicking dragging him by his neck. and they get to elizabeth street and port jervis along main street. and at that point, someone starts yelling, she's dead. lena is dead. and of course, once people think she's dead, they just drag him the street to a row of maple trees and a rope is thrown over the limb and he is pulled up by his neck very first time. he's hung twice. a judge, william h. crane, his brother, is stephen crane, the author of the red badge of courage and the monster and some others. he's home in main street when

his one of his employees says, you know, they're they're going to hang somebody outside. he gets himself together and runs out. and he describes how as he comes out of his house and he sees the mob, he sees a man being pulled up by his neck up the tree. so basically he went from being on the ground to pulling which again, incomprehensible horror. and he tries to intervene. he gets up there, he pushes his way through the crowd, and he gets up to where robert lewis is hanging. he sees the rope descending into the crowd and he grabs a hold of the rope and he starts pulling on it, just yelling for people to let it go. and he's yelling, there's people resisting, and he keeps pulling it. and eventually, i don't know if they listen to him or if he managed to just get a good pull, but eventually they release the rope. robert louis falls to the ground, to the gutter, and is having convulsions. he's alive. yeah. he's not dead yet. he's having a seizure.

he's gasping for air. and judge crane stands over him. he straddles over him and basically defies the mob. he takes the rope off of his neck and stands over him as if if you want him, you're going to have to come to me. that's a brave man. you know, he was a county judge. he was an attorney. he was no, i certainly wasn't a fighter, especially against the mob. but it took a very strong sense of character for him to do that. i admire that. and what he did, he managed to get simonyi airport next to him and a doctor who pushes his way through and the doctor looks at robert louis and says, you know, if we can get him out of here. i think he'll be okay. i think that was optimistic. i mean, at that point, he's suffering from a lot of shock. he's been you know, maybe he would have lived maybe he would have died later on. but a were either way could make a difference. and people are pushing their way through the crowd now. but it's there's a subtle that that sense of rage and violence

is sort of simmer down someone turn the heat down and people are bending down. they're holding matches near his face to get a look at him. and people are saying, you know, is that robert louis, that bob louis and judge crane says, you know, at that moment, a word either way could have an influence on what happened. and it did because somebody others in the crowd that that is robert louis. and he ought to be a couple of expletives hang for what he did at that they basically shove everybody away. robert louis, they throw the rope out of his neck. crane dives in there, grabs the rope off him again. he gets dragged out. simon naples pulled out of the crowd by the time crane can even get his way into the crowd again, he sees that robert louis is hanging and he's apparently dead at that point. and he actually leaves in disgust. he goes home. he just leaves the mob and walks

back to his house. so after he's murdered, he is hanged from the tree and he's left up there. it starts to rain and you have the police now just kind of standing there. you have the village president there waiting for a corner who is out of town. so the village president eventually says, look, cut him down. we'll get him to the funeral home. and that's what they do. and there's actually an exchange with simon abel and judge crane and a former police officer who was also a undertaker who was willing to take the body because he some money out of it. but yet he was also of the ones that may have been trying to hang him. and george crane actually said something to him like, you want to you want to tend to him after helping kill him. he just kind of quips, oh, there's there's $25 in it for me. so very flippant about it. you know. so eventually he's taken to a home. it's called carlton. 12 ago it was above a furniture store and port jervis if you're in port jervis today, this is the site where the lynching occurred.

so that used to be a vacant lot today. it's called the church, i believe it was the former baptist church in 1892. it was just a vacant lot. and that's where the bulk of that mob would have been hanging out. they would have been hanging in there, pulling the rope in that direction. the fowler residence had been located here was a nice big summer estate. erwin g. fowler, who was a publisher, lived there, and he had this nice row of maple trees. the tree. from what i can gather, based on my research, would have been just by the telephone pole. and there is now a marker there. unfortunately, i don't have confirmed pictures of the tree. have a picture of the tree, maybe taken 20 years before that. i think is the tree based upon my research, but there's no way to definitively say yes, that is the tree. so of course, this is all over the news on friday, june 3rd, everywhere there's a description

of the the wireless operators at the milltown tower, the railroad, intercepting all the news transmissions from port jervis to new york city and back about all the stuff that happened. like shortly after midnight. word is traveling that fast. so this is all over the newspapers. there's a lot of indignation and shame and there's also a sense of outrage. but there's also a sense of he got what he deserved. so people sort of talked out of both sides of their mouth, even the newspapers, you know, in one one blurb, they would condemn mob violence. they would condemn judge lynch. we don't we don't we don't agree with that. we condemn it. but then the paragraph. but he did commit the crime and he got what he deserved. and he probably would have gotten too lenient a punishment had he been held accountable anyway. so we got what he deserved. yeah. we don't, can we. don't we don't really approve of it. then. yeah. we're glad he had it anyway so

they and that's a very common theme i think even in the community, the local politicians from the district attorney down to the local community leaders, we're going to hold people accountable. we're not the self and the self people could be lynched in broad daylight and no one's held accountable. but not here in new york, not in port jervis. we're going to show. show the self that we're not like them. of course, the southern newspapers and their articles, they're almost gleeful because they get to kind of tell the north, oh, you're so much better than us, right? you're so much more civilized than us. oh, in total, white females raped. and then you do exactly what we do. so you're really not better than us. so it's almost like they get to turn the tables on the northern press for for a short time, even though it's a terrible equivalent, you know, you're still murdering people without trial, etc. so they're going to hold people accountable. and of course, i talked about the caveat and there was calling toilers june 3rd, friday, they

had to have police officers down there because the mob was now crowding to go in and look at the body. the body was on the second floor and basically they had to get the cops to help shut the funeral home down because people were cutting his hair, his clothing and basically the undertaker said, you know, if we don't stop it, they're going to have carried him away piecemeal by the time the day is over. so gruesome relic hunters, people hacked the tree for bark and wood. people cut up the rope for sections of rope and course bits of his hair, his clothing. a local businessman. he's even found and claimed have the shoes he was wearing and a bit of the rope and at least it to a curiosity museum in new york city for so much money a week so that people got a good look at it. i spent a lot time trying to find out what happened to that museum and that guy thinking maybe, maybe in a box somewhere in a museum is, you know,

someone has an old pair of shoes in a rowboat. i have no idea why that didn't come to anything. but this scene here, this row here, what about a mob scene that next day? so just as the mob scene the day before to lynch him, now they're coming out to look at him and sort of say, i want my i want my relic. and there are got to be i am waiting for the call. some guy or someone in port jervis, maybe one of the adjoining community is cleaning out there. their grandparents or great grandparents home. and they find an old cigar box in the rafters of the basement or maybe in the insulation in the attic and in it some bark and a piece of rope, maybe some scraps of clothing. and they have no idea why. maybe there's a note in and i'm like, because, you know, someone saved it and they probably tucked away wasn't something you had on your coffee table, like a nice coffee table book or discussion piece. but people kept those things. so the coroner's inquest is the first chance for the community to say we're different than the

south. we're going to show you how we hold people accountable. and the inquest begins on june six and it's flawed from the beginning and it quickly turns into a farce. i spent i can't even tell you how many hours looking through court files for a transfer report under law. a transcript was supposed to be made and it should have been filed with the county clerk. i think that was who i believe it would have had to be filed with because they would receive the records from a local court to i couldn't find. it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. it just means that after exhaustive search, i couldn't locate it. and next time i go back there, i'll keep looking again because i have other things i'm looking for. so i reconstructed the testimony witness by witness from multiple sources because the newspapers sent reporters to write almost verbatim what was going on. so fortunately those newspaper articles survived, and i was able to compare multiple articles showing what different

witnesses testified to. and when you put those all together, witness by witness, you're able to start to pick through and determine this is what the person testified to, and these were the sources of that that that say that. so i kind of reconstruct it. it and it was i think 50 sources at the end that took months. you know, when you're in the middle of the research, you don't think about it or you don't comprehend much work. it is still after where you go. that's how long like like i spent months on that. but the inquest had one job. the inquest had one simple task, and that was who killed robert louis? they didn't have to say how he died, even though that was part of it. but they knew he died from hanging. but who killed him? who was responsible. the coroner couldn't arrest somebody. he had the power arrest. issued an arrest warrant, and then that person could be prosecuted. if you go before a grand jury could be indicted, etc., etc. but it's problematic because

it's a public spectacle. the inquest is open to the public and. that means the prominent people involved as suspects are sitting in the audience as as spectators watching the witnesses testify to what they're allegedly supposed to have done. now, the coroner had complete control over who he called. there was no right to cross-examine witnesses, is there was no right to be called as a witness. but he allowed people to testify on their own behalf. so if i accused bill of being there and bill sitting there on one day, well, on tuesday, he's now sitting up here and saying, mike's a good guy, but he's just completely mistaken. i was trying to help the crowd. i wasn't trying to help the mob. no, no, no, no. i was trying to help robert louis to get him away from the crowd and he must've been confused in the chaos. one man basically, they go as far as to try to assassinate the

character of judge crane. he accuses a local attorney's son, a local, very well-regarded attorney, a man named raymond carr, who's a law student, is who judge crane names as uttering the incite four words that led to the second hanging. but he goes so far as putting in, you know, raymond carr writes a letter to one of the papers, basically attacking judge crane's character, calling him a liar, not even saying, okay, i think he's mistaken. maybe someone did say it, but it wasn't me. you know, i'm not going to say he didn't hear it, but i think he's confused as to who he thought said it. no, no. he goes on basically call him a liar, a very prominent member, the community and the orange county bar being called a liar in the press, which is things haven't changed much. we still do that today. just it's much more in our face because of tv and stuff like

that. so the coroner's inquest takes a five days. it's futile. at one point the newspaper, one of them says, you know, based upon the way the testimony is going, they're going to have to conclude that bob lewis was so full of remorse and guilt for what he did, that he hanged himself. that's what they call that was whatever. there's like this is basically how it's going to be because no one's one of the police officers of anything. patrick, sally saw nothing. nothing. he the testimony that i was able to reconstruct, i mean, this guy know violence, none of this i didn't see this. no, i didn't hear that. i didn't hear people shouting. now, i didn't want to think he was lying because what i think is patrick's ali was a nice guy. his brother was the roman catholic priest. one of the newspapers described him as being very timid of a man. i just think someone got to him witness tampering. i think they told him, you didn't see anything, right? you have to live here.

you have to work here. your family has to live here. he may have been sickly. he dies a few years later from i forget what he died from, but then you take someone like simon abel. he's a blacksmith by trade, so he probably doesn't care. they probably tried to threaten him. he's like, i don't care what you tell me, you know? go ahead. in fact, they probably didn't threaten him because of how brave he was. even under the tree. you know, i think there was definitely witness tampering. and i think patrick sallee is a good example of that or could be a good example of that we'll never know without talking to patrick. sally and that's impossible. this is the conclusion of the coroner's inquest. we find that robert louis came to his death in the village of port jervis on june 2nd, 1892, by being hanged by his neck by a person or persons unknown to this jury, unknown even after people were identified to the jury. so, of course, this is a farce. it's an insult to justice and the grand jury now is going to

have their turn. the district attorney of orange county is going to do what the coroner's jury could not do. he's going to hold people accountable. he's going to have a grand jury investigation. he's going to call witnesses and they're going to put people accountable. they're going to hold someone accountable so they can be convened a grand jury over in goshen and luckily found a lot of the minutes that are really going to detail the testimony because that was secret. but they do who was testified, who called to testify? there was receipts where people were reimbursed for the train ticket cost from port jervis to goshen and back. so it's able to really get a good idea of how many witnesses they called. a lot of people, including my great aunt jane, mary jane clark. i saw her receipt where she was given the money to go back to port jervis to reimburse her for her which is pretty cool. that's what i wish my grandmother lived to see that she really should've been amazed by that. and they can. then they convene the end of june more than 20 witnesses are

called two days of testimony. again, this is secret. and on june 24th, the grand jury issues, a report, a handwritten report, which was widely written about at the time but no one had ever seen, and basically they say, we cannot come to a decision on who is responsible because either the witnesses claim to not know anything or they just seem to have not seen anything, or they're just forgetful, or they're purposely lying to us. they're basically tell the judge we're trying, but we're not getting information. he sends them back to says, no, listen, just go back to deliberating. we'll get some more witnesses. the d.a. gets more witnesses. they bring more people over. and on june 29th, 1892, they hands up some indictments. so they indict several men for a riot. so indict william fitzgibbons,

louis avery, john hanley and john layman for riot. most of them are railroaders, not all of them for assaults. second, they invite those same men, plus a local grocer named john egan. those are the incitements directly related to the lynching of the grand jury finds the grand jury also finds pj foley for blackmail because while all this is going on, a whole other drama between foley and lena mcmann is unfolding because he gets charged with blackmail. so they have to have an open, preliminary hearing and the salacious details that they start going into about the relationship, the blackmailing, it's again, we always like to think the past was so much better. and you you could just go back. it was no different. they still people were people but they also he up another indictment which really went down in the the law of this story and they indict the village president for neglect of public office, which of course

the district attorney immediately moves for dismissal because it's completely unfounded in law. but that was a big part of the law. and of course, you know, the indictment was reported upon the dismissal, but it wasn't until i got to the archives that i actually found the original documents. so i'm holding the original indictment of opl handwritten. you find in my friend linda zimmerman, who does a lot of work with me, took that as literally. it was the first box we opened and i started pulling documents out. i'm like, well, you're not going to believe this. and she's like, you know why? and she starts taking pictures. i'm glad you did, because you can't recreate this moment. i did find the original grand jury report, which really breaks down, you know, it's great reading a newspaper article, but when you can go one step further, you know, the primary sources, you're always trying to go, how far back can i go? how far back can i go? so the district attorney asked the court, hey, listen, i would

like to try again in the fall, the next grand jury, can i do that? and the judge gives him permission. they try it again. they bring everybody back over. they bring more witnesses. they hear testimony. and even a second grand jury can't come to any conclusions that anybody else did. it. the indictments that are found against the five men are never brought to trial. and i couldn't find in the minutes where they were dismissed, but the minutes for that era and they separated their court files very oddly, the way they're stored, i couldn't find the specific minutes to show where they were dismissed, but i had minutes for that era. i don't know why. so i don't know when they were specifically dismissed. i have the statement of the district attorney later on that he gave to somebody that they could never prove them at trial. so they they had to just let them go. but there's lot more to the story. so robert louis. let me see. i got to.

oh, he doesn't even look it at. so who was he. you know, there's so much to about with robert louis, you know, who was he his life before june 2nd, 1892? he was so much more than just that night, so much more than the victim of a lynching. he was a man. he was a human being, his family. did he have surviving family members? are there family members today who can be traced to his, you know, somehow related to him? and also, i found a piece of his life that still survives today, which is in the book. and it's i'll give you a little hint. it's his signature. a couple of examples of his handwriting, his signature as a witness on his mother's widow's application for a pension. so you can imagine when i that file and i was going through this pdf and i saw the name robert murray, it instantly hit me like this is signature. that's him. he wrote this? yeah, it's a it's a scan. it's not the document, but it's

as close as i'll ever get or anybody else will ever get to a piece of his life. he also did one other thing, which was at the time, not good, but as a historian and a researcher, he went to to prison in 1880 to 1883 for basically being a bad crowd. i don't think he was bad person, but he got arrested. they broke into a store and took some cigars. he went to sing sing for about a year. and the sing sing admission record still survived it told so much about him. is height, weight, description, where his scars were. i mean, his build, his occupation, i mean, essentially he left as a time capsule, not knowing it at the time, but when he got arrested for that, pled guilty and went to prison, he left future generations time careful about who he was. there are pictures of him somewhere. his mother had one. i'm still always hopeful. d.j. foley, the scoundrel my wife was over there, used to

hear my research about him in want to do really nasty things to him with a rusty knife, which he probably deserves. but who was he? could i find out who was really pj foley? philip. peter patrick. what happened to him, unfortunately, is still question mark. i do talk about a few potential suspects, but i can't say yes, this this is pj. i want to know, did he have a good life afterwards? what happened to him? did he just act like nothing ever happens? you know, he gets arrested, but never to trial. nothing ever happens to him legally. he just sort of jumps bail, gets picked up and then everything gets squashed. and by the end of 1892, this is of the papers everybody wants to forget. no one wants to talk about this anymore. there's pj. we don't want to see you. and here's lina, the really the forgotten victim who really was an enigma during my research,

because we knew a lot about her up until. 1892. she disappears. then she shows up in 1894 in new york city, and she shows up in york city with a dead infant in her hotel room in august of 1894, a decomposing infant. she's arrested. she's held for infanticide. the newspapers about that, she had lost her mind after the attack. she was using different name and. her mother ends up going down, gets her the pathologist who does the concludes. the baby was stillborn, never took a breath. so she's not a murderer. she's not held in custody. she's released. and after that, june or august of 1894 gone, nobody before i got digging into this ever found out happened to her and made it one of my top priorities. i'm going to tell her story if it kills me like i'm going to

tell the story of lina mcmann what happened or i'm to tell you where she lived and when she died and that was not easy. that was a hard, hard journey because she was adopted. that wasn't her real name. she used different names, different combinations of the same names. but she ends up basically going with her family to first. cambridge, massachusetts, and then her father dies. the mother and her end up in boston and lena ends up dying. 1911 september from basically it's it's called general paralysis of the insane. it's neuro syphilis so she dies at the boston state hospital in an insane asylum from tertiary syphilis. so very sad. but you find out where she was buried. i went up and visited her grave. it's unmarked. her parents have a stone for her father because he was a civil

war veteran. but a very sad to her life because she really never had a life after that day. and i had some other things that could have been her that were newspaper articles up in that area. but there's no way to definitively that it's her probably, but not enough from putting a book and say, i think it's her. so the lynching tree was another goal of mine because in 1985, orange and rockland down a tree on east main street near the lynching site, which people have long thought was the tree. that's why my aunt jenny was in the newspaper in 1985. there was newspaper articles written about it by the municipality historical society. well, i knew that wasn't the tree, and i had evidence that the tree was cut two years later. but, well well, where was the tree? you know, can put it next marks the spot. can i say this is where it was and i made that a goal. is there a picture of it and? i'm able. that's one of the reasons why i'm able to talk earlier and

say, yeah, the tree was right about here. yeah, i can't say it was exactly here, but it was like this area. so and i thought a picture of what i think is a tree from the 1870s and i spent a lot of time on that picture breaking down the time frame by the buildings in it because there were churches and those churches took damage from different storms. so knowing the damage and, what was removed, i can tell that, well, this is pre-storm and because this was knocked off the church this year or this church wasn't completed until this year. so fortunately, there's a lot of photographs of the area that i can work with. and of course, there was this looming question of so many of them that needed to be answered. and what she assaulted must mean assaulted. what about those accused? were they guilty? where they involved? how did this forgotten? how does it go from this horrible june 2nd of 1892? where in the years that follow it just sort of fades away?

we're by the time i was working on this, people had heard about it, but they couldn't really tell you lot of details. they could. they thought, well, maybe he was hanged in the park. you know, they didn't know their level of violence. they just knew there was a lynching and that was about all. and they knew some people knew a little bit more. they knew lena mcmahon, but there was no details. and i felt like if you're going to tell the story it needs to be told accurately and as descriptively as possible. could it be prevented? how come no one is held accountable? you know, how that happened. how does it go from observed and witness to? sorry, we can't tell you who did it because we don't know that he instigated it. was pj foley the instigator and was robert lewis guilty on the big picture, robert lewis was innocent until proven guilty. he was and is an innocent man. whether or not he committed the offense legally, you know, there's a difference between being legally responsible,

criminally and then actually committing offense. you can commit an offense but not be held criminally liable. o.j. simpson's example, he was found not guilty on a criminal trial where the burden of proof is high. but on civil trial, where the burden is much lower, he's found liable for wrongful death. so you you know it could it can be witnessed. and there have been cases where people have been acquitted of murders. and then afterwards the murderers go, yeah, that they can't tried again. double jeopardy applies. so it does happen. it's rare. on june 22nd, 2022, the 130th anniversary, something that i didn't think would ever happen. a historical marker was erected and dedicated at the site of the lynching it was done in cooperation with a group called the friends of robert louis, who had been getting together for a few years. they would they would, you know, meet on the anniversary. they would walk row. they had facebook.

they have a facebook group that references and also racial justice in general, not just not just his case. and then with the historical society and the governor's, they managed to get this wonderful marker erected. the language was done very carefully. you know, they a lot of time trying to make it an appropriate commemorating the event and remembering that robert louis was murdered. and, of course, the name robert louis is what's been stuck in the book i use jackson because that's the name he went by his stepfather was henry jackson. and there's the book, my my two awards, which i'm proud of. i'm going to wear them tonight. but i was like, oh, that's kind of bragging next. and if you have any questions, love to entertain them. i'm very passionate about this subject and. yes, it was a thursday. it was on a thursday, yes. yeah. that's what i was wondering. i was just assuming maybe that

it was alcohol fueled. i'd say week, end of the week or. oh i'm sure there was alcohol. yes alcohol for you. and one of the things. that's a good question. a good point. the local papers in the coming days, you know, one of the things they try to claim is, oh, these weren't local people that did it. these were out of town, ruffians, railroaders. they did it that local people, which is nonsense, but that was one of the things they tried to sort of use like yeah it was now where the railroad is, their i'm sure there were were there out of towners there? i'm sure there were there were hotels all over the in that area. but it wasn't the out-of-towners that were whipping up a mob, it was local people. yeah. but it's funny how they do try to claim. it's the lawless element. it's the the drunken railroaders, you know, they're just all drunken. did this was it us? it was them. yeah. thank you. thank you. anybody else? questions yeah. you're talking the mob were were there women involved in this mob

or women, children or was it just a bunch of men. so i've never found any accounts that listed women being present or young children being present for the lynching. there is accounts of young looking boys having climbed the tree to put the rope over the limb. but they you know, there's no definitive way to say they were they were very young. i'm thinking they were probably like early teens. there is an account of a woman looking at the body afterwards, going up there and fainting, whether it's true or not, there's no way to verify it. it's a it's a it's a brief report in one of the papers. they don't say who it was or give you any real details. you just sort of say, yeah, we one of the women went up there and fainted. and in all the court, was lena involved. in any of that, was she getting any support from the community? yes. so, you know, she was involved directly with the blackmailing case and port jervis initially testifying against pj foley. she did testify as the grand jury. she went over multiple times. i don't know that she testified

in the lynching case because. they really weren't concerned about her role. it was how did this happen? you know, who did this? why did you get a feeling that the community was supporting her? they were very supportive, yes. yeah. they were absolutely definitely supportive of lena. there was a big outpouring. you could tell just by the way, they talked about her, you know, friends visiting her even in 1894. they talked about some of the nuns from the orphanage, new york city coming to port jervis to visit her after they found out the whole baby thing. so i think she had a very strong support network, but she just she unraveled and, you know, i think it's a form post-traumatic stress disorder, rape syndrome during the you know, very before the testimony at the at the hearings and stuff, nina wanders from port jervis almost to otis ville, walking along the canal and then crossing up to otis ville, i think right before she

walks address. that's crazy. amount of miles she just goes missing and the fathers out and friends saw carlie looking for her now and this is mid-june. so this is where when her father finds her, she doesn't recognize him at first. he has to kind of just like, come on, let's get this. let's get the carriage. and they so she definitely mentally unraveled terribly afterwards. and i'm sure then later in life neuro syphilis was not a help and it probably contributed to a much quicker decline. you know, functioning how old she was, you know, how old she was about 20, 21, yeah. did she say robert assaulted her. they never say anything about what her reports was. they never they really briefly about the assault. there's no, like really in-depth interview with her at all after

the years after the lynching. it's all about the black or who lynch robert lewis is. so they never really ever her none that i could find. i couldn't find anything in the newspapers. i was i was hoping to find the transcript from the local hearing, which was unable to find again. there should have been a transcript made. so if it exists, it's in a box somewhere and iron mountain and you know, it was yeah, can we get in and, you know, eventually i'm going to go back over, email them about some other cases. it could be talked in the wrong box. you know, could have been misfiled or they don't exist, took them home, they got thrown out. you know, any number of things between now and 1892, as much as i wish it was, could go back in time and get copies of this. but this is the length of time that they were investigating this. you know, the the trial, the

pretrial. so it was the length of time. so the grand was, you know, the latter half of june, 1892 and concludes at the end june. and then they try again for a couple of weeks in september. so really, that's all. you know, the police at that time weren't really an investigative force. there wouldn't have been an officer assigned to follow up. it was the coroner. and then the district attorney through his power with the grand jury. so it's, you know, tell you a case like that would be you'd have multitudes of detectives, investigators, and people would be questioned. i mean, it would until you people would have videos of it on the cell phones would be much easier. and i'm still kind of amazed that port jervis had a lot of photographers that nobody got a picture at the tree. there is a picture of him in his casket at the funeral home, but i haven't been able to find it. but it's referenced, which is frustrating. nothing worse than. as a historian, bill smiles like knowing something probably exists, and you can't get your hand on it.

you know, i just to to thing if she had testified that it was him i think that would be easy to find that would be right out there the fact that it doesn't show her testifying that he's there, it's almost as if she said it wasn't him. yeah, it's the that's a good reason for not to be. and i think you i think the biggest part of the of a real direct lena testimony is the subject of rape was just taboo. they just didn't really want to cover anymore because like well we can't do anything more to him. he's already been killed. so we need to keep and lena's a popular young woman. they don't want to keep dragging her name and her family through. the newspapers. i think that that had to do with it had she been poor and lived on the outskirts of port jervis, maybe they would have gotten more details of her life. you know, if she was she was no good. you know, there's an account of a of a white woman who had

children with a black man, lived out there and starved to death with kids. and the papers basically write, she got she deserved, you know. she left to go with them. and that's what she gets. and that was her attitude. but i think lena mcmahon comes from a different family. they they run store. they're community members. john mcmillan's a civil war veteran. he's part of the grand army of the republic. you know, he's standing there at the remembrance days when they're honoring the veterans and one square park there, they're not going to drag her name cause through the mud versus i think a lot of it to a. well, great. mike, thank you so much. thank you. this is great. i love talking about this topic and course i'll be hanging around afterwards. the email says questions. i do have copies of my book for sale. i'm always happy to sign them. signatures are free today. they won't get you far either, so don't worry about it. thank you. thank you so can have more people. oh, hey, this is.

i'll talk to one person if i can. i love this. this stuff. you're good. storyteller. thank you. just a little notes there. but, you know, you hit on a little bit more about that. yeah, it. if i didn't have bullets, i would be all over the i would be my brain. i'd be like, oh, it's let's talk about this part for right, right. darling, my wife will tell you the day that i found out leanne mcmahon died because different names, i traced it 1900 senses where i could say her. got it. oh, yeah. after 1900, she was gone. i couldn't find her in 1910, 20 onward. so i'm like, either she's dead by 1910 or after or before or, you know, like, something's got to be on. she's using a different name. so i just pored census records. i mean, i stared at the computer screen, and when i what i thought might have been her mother, that's when i was able to put two and two together. because when i found the mother

i found lena under different spelling of her name. and then i was able to go from there and find out, okay, she's a 1910. that was a that was several months. but then after 1910, she's gone. it's like, okay, i got her to hear where is she? and i eventually found a cemetery where i knew where her father buried. so i was able to get the cemetery records and go go through their cemetery. and i found where her mother bought a plot in 1911 for the adult her daughter, using the name that i think lena used legally, which was helen or evangeline, because i have her signature in her father's pension file signing as a witness. so. and then everything fell into place like lena's a nickname. so, yeah, that's what i was thinking. helena helena. well my wife that day. you know, i think i worked

midnights stuff, so i, i think she was in the bathroom getting dressed or something. and i come in and i sit down. i'm like, i got some really terrible news, which is like, what i'm like, it's sad. linda mcmahon is dead. it's like, well, yeah, she be like 100 and something years old, but to me. she was still alive because i hadn't verified her death. my siblings no, no, just her. just her and her parents having other children. yeah. robert louis may have had half siblings because his mother ends up in paterson and is living with other children listed as her children that would be younger than him. but i need to do a lot more digging. yeah. and genealogy work. and that was the rabbit hole. i wasn't going down. i was like, can't, i'll be here for another two years. well, he may have relatives, he may not. it could be the census. wrong. they could have been family members or other, but.

and she she outlived like everybody his mother lives. i forget where it like to the 1920s. yeah, i mean she lives a long time so yeah she was like, yeah, thanks. i keep talking all night. you as you know, we're like three kids.