Jimmie O’Donnell was a good boy who never knew his dad and shot his step-father smack-dab in the heart, but I’ve already told you about that. Cleveland was rough in 1903.

Jimmie’s mom was my great-grandmother, Kate. She had a flock of kids and watched Jimmie shoot her husband dead, but she was okay with that. By all accounts, John Atkinson had it coming.

I must tell you that I have never known a happy day with my husband since I married him. He has been a drinking man all the time, and many a time I have been forced to accept his abuse through this accursed stuff.”

He was a hard worker, and as a man who was acquainted with him remarked, ‘He did not have a lazy bone in his body, but he was too fond of drink, and it made him quarrelsome.'”

Cleveland Leader, March 14, 1903, pages 1, 3. Read the complete article.

Unwinding the family connections was tricky. Jimmie was twenty-two in 1903. The 1900 Federal Census shows Kate’s nine surviving children still living at home, but it doesn’t differentiate between those of her first and second husband. The birthdates of the two eldest sons are off by three years and their last names are listed as Atkinson (well, Atkison, but nobody ever spells it right, even now).

The boys’ last name was O’Donnell. The news reports of John’s killing said that, and so did some records that my dad had saved from his father’s business. By searching the Cuyahoga County, Ohio birth registers on Ancestry.com, I found records for John, August 9, 1878, and James, June 14, 1880.

Katie (Catharine) McMahon and James O’Donnell were Jimmie and John O’Donnell’s parents.

Wondering what happened to James, I poked around for the family in the 1880 census records. I couldn’t find James or Jimmie, but I found Kate and her two-year old son John living with her parents, Arthur and Bridget McMann. Kate’s brother Fred McMann, and her brother-in-law, Joseph O’Donnell lived there too.

Two other items jumped out: Kate is listed as a 21 year-old widow and the date of the census enumeration was June 14, 1880, the day of the Jimmie O’Donnell’s birth. It must have been a busy day at the McMann household.

Next, I found Kate’s 1881 marriage certificate to John C. Atkinson.

Still, I didn’t know what had happened to James, so I kept at it. I can count to nine, so figuring backwards, James must have died between September 1879 and June 1880. A Find A Grave entry looked promising. It showed the Cleveland death of twenty-four year-old James O’Donnell on November 19, 1879. With that, a GenealogyBank search revealed that on November 19, 1879,

“James O’Donnell was at work at the H. M. Chaplin & Co’s slaughter house, trying to make a passage through a chute for salt to run, the salt gave way unexpectedly to O’Donnell, and carrying him through the chute, buried him under five feet of salt, where he was found an hour later smothered to death.”

Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, November 20, 1879. Read the complete article.

…probably around the same time that Kate might have figured she was pregnant with his second son. Sheesh. Cleveland was rough in 1879.

It started with my daughter’s spit. Mel shared her AncestryDNA results provoking my curiosity and a desire to learn more about my family. I figured I’d start with the known and move on from there. Since Clare had been poking at the Fairchild side it made sense for me to look at the Atkinsons. I have a vague sense of dad’s family but figured I’d best fill in what I knew and look up what I didn’t. When doing that I noticed that my great-grandfather showed up in the 1900 census and not the 1910. Hmmm. I searched for death records and found a notation that he had died in 1903. After a bit more hunting I found a reference to cause of death in a coroner’s report. That kinda caught my eye. Dad had told me that there was a scandal…sometimes it was a horse theft, but mostly a family murder scandal.

I figured there might be something in the newspaper. There was. I found this from the March 12, 1903 Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The rest of the story was behind a paywall. That’s how I learned how truly awful newspaper paywalls can be. $10 bucks for 1 day’s access to 20 stories; $20 for a month and 200 stories. Mel pointed out that I’d pay that much for a glass of wine at dinner and shamed me into commitment. I rationalized that I might find a month’s worth of entertainment. The site was appalling and their search, worse. I’d have preferred to be able to view a page at a time, read anything, then get charged for downloading a story. You actually have to pay to read each individual article. I can’t imagine anyone buying in a second time. Next time I’ll wait to go to a Cleveland library.

The Plain Dealer’s March 12, 1903 article had an interesting tone…really an attitude. See the article in the Cleveland Leader on the same date for another perspective.

” …
A few minutes before 10 o’clock Atkinson came home and his wife says that he was under the influence of liquor. It seems that he had often come home in a similar condition and the members of the family declare that they were afraid of him upon such occasions.
…
Atkinson was fifty-one years old and had been employed at the Division street pumping station. His stepson is twenty-two years old and is a brass finisher for the Westinghouse company. The neighbors give him a very good reputation and say that he has never been in any trouble before.”

As the week progressed, a murder charge seemed less likely. From March 13th:

The headlines continued: “O’Donnell, Who Killed His Stepfather is Very Sick. Mother of the Young Man Fainted at the Police Station.”  In the article, one learns “the exposure and excitement together have caused him [O’Donnell] to suffer a rather severe relapse” and that his mother “appears deeply affected by the condition of her son.”  It closed, “Coroner Burke rendered his verdict … in which he exonerated O’Donnell on the ground that the shooting was done in defense of himself and his mother.”

March 15th: “If my word is worth anything, young O’Donnell need not worry a minute because there is a manslaughter charge hanging over his head” said Prosecutor Keeler, yesterday.
“…there is no question in my mind but that he will never be indicted, let alone prosecuted. He shot and killed only in self-defense and that after several years of perpetual abuse by his stepfather.”

March 18th: “The grand jury has taken up his case and it is said returned a ‘no bill.’ O’Donnell is the young man who killed his step-father when the latter, in a drunken fit, attempted to assault his family.”