Sometimes it takes multiple years and even decades to finally resolve a question that has been rolling around in your head.
My great-uncle Herbert H Sheridan is such a question.
Herb was born 11 Jan 1880 in Fulton, Gratiot County, Michigan and was the oldest of nine children born to Michael and Elizabeth (Holland) Sheridan. Any pictures of him that have survived show a young man who never looked happy. Maybe it was being the oldest, or maybe it was just in his genetics to not be a good person.
Herbert H Sheridan ca1900
I grew up with the 'story' that he had gotten into an argument with a railroad official, had hit said official, and then because he thought he had killed him, Herb 'ran from the law' as a 'bum' and no one knew what happened to him. That is what my mom (his niece) had told me.
I searched for newspaper reports of such a thing happening but never found any.
Mom had also told me that 'a man came to the door one night asking for her dad and her mom told him that John was working up north at a CCC camp'. Mom stated that she thought she was in High School, about 10th grade.
That would have been about 1939.
That was all the clues I had about Herb. I periodically searched records and newspapers around Michigan and also 'the East' not really knowing what I was looking for but hoping that something would stand out.
I had found a few Herbert Sheridan's around the state of Michigan that were close in age to my Herb and just in case he stayed around I followed up on them. Although there were some similarities, I kept hitting a dead end.
And than a clue showed up one day back in 2018. A newspaper article published in a small mid-Michigan newspaper had become available on-line that gave me a conflicting clue to what I had been told. An article that would lead me to the truth and the 'rest of the story'.
Alma Record 13Jan1905 pg1 col6
By 1904, at age 24, Herb was in prison and would be sentenced to spend the rest of his life there for shooting and killing Wayland F Bennett, the Mayor of Thompson, Illinois.
Everything that I had thought about Herb changed that day. I was happy to finally solve a brick wall but was devastated that he was a criminal. Researching the incident and following up gave a finality to the story.
Herb was listed with his parents and siblings in the 1900 Perrinton, Gratiot County, Michigan census. His father Michael stated that the family had not seen Herb for quite some time and it wasn't until he was notified about him being in jail that he had any contact with him.
Newspaper reports stated that he had been in Wisconsin and was wanted for another crime there and he was also connected with a John Powell in Chicago. He went by the alias William or Billy Myers and he and Powell were often seen together in saloons and usually involved in a fight while drunk.
Then came the fateful day in September 1904. Meyers (Herb) and a companion by the name of John Johnson (John Powell), were arrested on suspicion of being implicated in a burglary that had taken place in Chadwick, IL In an interview with a reporter, he stated that it was an accident that the gun went off and that the mayor was struck and then as they grappled for the gun, it went off four more times. Articles about the incident state that Bennett had started for the jail with his charge when Myers turned on him, pulled a revolver and fired five shots into his body, killing him instantly.
His father Michael Sheridan went to visit him in Illinois, and his mother Elizabeth wrote him a letter and also a letter to the prison superintendent stating that her son 'was a good boy and she hoped that they would treat him kindly'. I found a 'society article' that stated that Elizabeth was in Detroit visiting family around that time. Did she go to Detroit, or did she also go visit her son? The penalty for murder was death and that was what Herb was facing.
At his first trial he was found guilty by a jury. His court appointed attorneys filed a motion for a retrial. So, he would have to be remanded to the local jail until his next court date.
His final court appearance was kept quiet, and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to life in prison instead of a murder verdict where he would have been sentenced to the death penalty. He was remanded to the state penitentiary at Savannah, Illinois.
I continued to research newspapers looking further up the road in case he had been paroled and was released. Instead, I found that he was a shyster and actually escaped from prison. He had pretended that he was insane and had been transferred from a high-security prison to a lesser security facility.
The Dispatch, Moline, Illinois Mon 16Jan1922 pg1
Further research has not revealed any other articles that he was ever caught and returned to prison. I followed up with contacting the prison system in Illinois looking for records and/or photos but was told that there was nothing in their archives. He had served close to 20 years of his life sentence and would have been aged 42 when he escaped.
Who was that person that had come looking for John Sheridan in 1939? Could it have been Herb?
I am sure his parents and siblings were ashamed of what he had done and where he was actually living, yet he was still family. But what is amazing is that no one ever talked about it or knew what had actually happened to Herb.
Or did they?
Barbie
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