Crazy in Love

From the newspaper archives of Staunton, Virginia:

A.H. McGehee, a patient at Western State Hospital in 1910, fell in love with Alice Lillie, a beautiful female attendant, and she reciprocated. In December, McGehee and Lillie met in Staunton and obtained a marriage license from the city clerk.

"As the clerk does not know a lunatic from anybody else," noted the Staunton Daily Leader, "he issued the license. They hunted up Dr. O.F. Gregory, the obliging pastor of the Baptist Church, who is just as innocent when he sees a lunatic."

The pair were married, but their happiness short-lived. Officials at the hospital quickly found McGehee and hurried him back into custody, ending the romance, while Lillie was summarily discharged from her job. [Link]

So That's What Rebels Smelled Like

The Graffiti House in Brandy Station, Virginia, was occupied by both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. They left behind names, dates and drawings scribbled on the walls, discovered during a renovation in 1992. New graffiti came to light just last summer.

[Paint-removal specialist Kirsten] Travers ... uncovered a large piece of graffiti in the JEB Stuart room - where the Confederate Army General signed his name. The new image is a full-size figure of a man with a head resembling a pumpkin. On his torso is the phrase: “President J. Davis. Good on the boots.”

Neither Travers nor Edrington know what the phrase means but they suspect it is a sarcastic comment, perhaps about Davis’ efforts in providing adequate footwear to soldiers.

Besides the date and the pumpkin head, Travers found another image of a horse standing in front of a man who had been revealed previously.

Edrington said the volunteers thought the man was a standalone image but now he is seen behind the horse and above him are the words, “He smells a rebel.” [Link]

Harrison Tyler's Late-Born Lineage

Randy reported something cool tonight over at Genea-Musings: a grandson of President John Tyler (1790-1862) is still alive, and lives in his grandfather's Virginia home, Sherwood Forest Plantation.

Take a moment or two to absorb that. John Tyler, our tenth chief executive, was born in 1790, when George Washington still had nine years to live, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, 36 years each. The Tyler who now lives in the family home is neither President Tyler’s great-great grandson nor his great-grandson but his grandson. In the person of Harrison Tyler, in other words, we Americans are still only a couple of generations removed from the men who founded this Republic. [Link]

As Randy points out, Harrison is the result of two randy old men fathering children: President Tyler at age 63, and his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler at age 75. My paternal grandfather would be 96 were he alive today. Harrison's would be nearly 217.