Some of you may have heard me complain about this before, but it bears repeating - it really bugs me when people disappear from the family tree. It happens more often than I'd like, too. People are there in one census and then poof! 10 years later, they're gone. No newspaper clippings, no death certificate, no marriage records. Nothing. Just...gone. Some of these people can eventually be found through a lot of hard searching, diligence and patience, but others will never be found.
I recently came across some startling information about just how close we came to having yet another member drop off the Hogan family tree. I've exchanged a few emails with a wonderful new cousin of ours, the daughter of one of Grannie's cousins, and she shared a newspaper article about the death of Frank Hogan, the brother of her grandfather, Harry Hogan, and my great-grandfather, Joseph Hogan.
Joseph and Harry had two older brothers - Frank and George - and a younger sister. Sadly, both brothers died at a relatively young age (24 and 26, respectively), and within a year of each other. I had found death certificates for both brothers, so I knew that George had died of pneumonia/meningitis and Frank had died in a railroad accident. Not much of a mystery here...or so I thought until our cousin shared the newspaper article.
As it turns out, Frank was very nearly another large question mark on our family tree.
In the early morning hours on May 1, 1912, Frank was struck by a train in Ashland, Ohio and killed instantly. Frank was not local to Ashland, so he was not known to the local authorities. Without any identification on the body, Frank was sent to the local funeral home as an unidentified body.
According to the article, a steady stream of people came through the funeral home to view the body over the next few days. With no identification, though, preparations were under way to bury Frank's body in the local "potters field" - the poor man's cemetery, where he would have been just another unidentified grave - on Sunday.
Fortunately, on Saturday afternoon, an unknown man arrived at the funeral parlor, according to the newspaper "drawn by curiosity," and identified the body as being Frank's. Ashland police contacted Mansfield police, and the Hogan family was notified.
The newspaper article further states that Frank's father, Michael Hogan, and his two brothers traveled to Ashland and identified the body. In 1912, Joe Hogan would have been 20 years old and Harry would have been 22. Frank's body had to have been horrific to see - according to the article, "the right arm and leg was cut from the body and internal injuries made death practically instantaneous." I can't even imagine what it must have been like for Joe and Harry to have to see their brother like that at such a young age.
Which brings me to another interesting possibility raised by this story. Grannie told me that it was her understanding that she had been named Frances after her mother's favorite brother, Frank, who had died in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. After researching the Fagan family, though, I am positive that none of the 11 Fagan children died during the Spanish flu - and none of them were named Frank.
Reading the article about Frank Hogan has me thinking, though - what if Grannie had assumed only been given an approximate year of death and had just made the assumption it was the flu epidemic? It wouldn't be the first time someone made an assumption about our family history, that's for sure. And what if she had the wrong side of the family? Her parents named their first son after Grandma Hogan's father, and their second after Joseph himself. Seeing his brother in the condition he must have been in after his death had to have been traumatic for Grandpa Hogan, so it's certainly possible that he chose to name his third child in honor of his late brother.
If that unknown man hadn't wandered into the funeral home, Frank Hogan's fate might never have been known. His family would have spent the rest of their lives wondering if Frank had simply run off, not knowing where he was or what had become of him. And maybe, if that had happened, Grannie Frannie wouldn't have been Frannie at all...
What's that they say about a butterfly flapping its wings?
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