Unforgotten: When the Records Tell a Different Story

Some stories are long remembered, passed from one generation to the next without anyone stopping to question them. But when we take the time to look deeper into the existing records, we sometimes discover they weren’t entirely accurate — and in rare cases, they may not have happened at all. This is one such story.

In the winter of 1897-1898, newspapers across the United States began printing a shocking story.

According to the reports, two small children belonging to a man named George Coakley, livingsomewhere near the Arkansas–Oklahoma–Missouri border, were left home alone while their mother visited a neighbor. When she returned, the papers claimed, the children had been attacked and almost entirely devoured by pigs.

The Mena Weekly Star, Wed 29 Dec 1897

St. Joseph Gazette, Fri 24 Dec 1897

Arkansas City Traveler, Thur 23 Dec 1897

The Southern Standard, Fri 7 Jan 1898

This is the kind of story that stops you cold — and that’s exactly what it was designed to do.

But once I started digging into the records, I discovered something odd.

There was no George Coakley living in that region in the years surrounding 1897.

No children that are suddenly gone from the picture.

No death records.

No coroner’s inquest.

No local reporting on this family at all.

Nothing in the county courts, the census, or the surrounding communities.

Yet the story appeared in newspapers all around the country, as far away as California and even Maine — all with identical wording.

History remembers this late‑19th‑century reporting style as Yellow Journalism. At this point in time, I'm convinced the Coakley story didn’t actually happen. It was completely fictional sensationalized journalism meant to sell papers. Sometimes, in order to be the first paper to report the story, publishers would jump the gun, reporting predicted outcomes and partial truths. Like this one about the Newsom-Jones family.

Daily Arkansas Gazette, Tue 12 Apr 1898

Further research will later reveal that only "the old gentleman Newson" had actually drowned.

Arkansas Democrat, Wed 20 Apr 1898

This family was originally from Parallel, Washington County, Kansas where the following article ran three months later.

The Linn Digest, Fri 22 July 1998

And in Washington County, Kansas in 1883 there's a marriage record form William W Jones and Louise J Newsom

Evidence that Mr. William Jones did not drown that day in the Spring of 1898, alongside his mother-in-law, comes whenever he is found alive and well two years later, enumerated in the 1900 census in Cane Hill, Washington County, Arkansas as a house carpenter. Notice most of his children are born in Kansas.

 

This location makes sense considering the mention of Muddy Fork in the article that reported the three drownings, which is located along the road that would have taken them from Cane Hill in Washington County, to Fisher Ford, Siloam Springs, in Benton County, where William Jones' in-laws, the Newsom's resided.

1903 Plat Map of Township 14 Range 32 

Evidence that his mother-in-law also survived any tragic accident resulting in her death is also found in the 1900 census, where she can be found living alone as a widow in Hico, Benton County, Arkansas, age 65.

These two stories remind me of a story that's been passed down and printed about my own 4th great grandfather's death. The story is told that he was beaten and murdered by Bushwhackers while he was working on his property near Fallsville, Newton County, AR. It's said he died in his wife's arms while his brains "ozzed out into her lap". 

One of my first YouTube videos was about this man's daughter and in that video, I mention the brutal deaths of James Boen and his in-law's at the hands of neighbors turned Bushwackers.  

Cemeteries: Evans, Oark, Patterson Springs, Yale by Evans and Dewberry pg 227

I also mention the discrepancy of military records indicating he died in hospital Crystal Hill 12 Aug 1862

So which account tells us the truth? The military record lists only the initials J. M. Boen — nowhere does it name him as James Monroe Boen. And the very next entry is for Jesey (sic) Boen, grouped later with Jesse Boen who is also recorded as “died in hospital at Camp Hope 27 Aug 1862.” Two Boens, both dying in hospitals within weeks of each other, both recorded only by initials or misspellings. Is it possible the bushwhacker story is true, and the hospital death was mistakenly attributed to the wrong man?

Find-A-Grave, Camp Nelson 

So, when I sift through these old accounts — whether it’s a fabricated tale printed to sell papers, a rushed report that got the facts wrong, or even a family legend shaped by grief — I’m not trying to take anything away. I’m trying to give something back. In families like mine, where bushwhacker violence was not just a rumor but a lived horror that claimed fathers and brothers, it’s easy to see how trauma could shape the way a story was told and retold. But once the records come into view, we owe it to the people we’re remembering to separate what was feared from what was documented, and to let the truth stand on its own. Accuracy is a form of honor. Truth is a form of remembrance.

In the end, the truest honor we can give is to remember them rightly.

The Unforgotten -- William D Shaw

Welcome to my series about the unknown, yet unforgotten people I encounter through genealogy research. These are individuals for whom few records remain—many who likely didn’t reach adulthood, left no descendants, and are otherwise lost to time. Some stories survive only because one person cared enough to write a few lines in a fading newspaper. Today’s post begins with one such man—William D. Shaw—whose brief notice preserved the memory of two people who might otherwise have vanished entirely from the historical record.

In May 1859 he published in the newspaper, a death notice for a man named Sewell Cavin, who had been in his employ for nearly two decades, as well as the death of a beloved Cherokee woman who had tragically drown in the Grand River.

The Arkansian - 21 May 1859

Further research reveals that Sewell Cavin did indeed purchase 4 parcels totaling 320 acres of land in Washington County, Arkansas, along Moore’s Creek and Muddy Fork, at the junction of what is now Fat Nash Road and Bethel Blacktop near the Rheas Community in the years 1838 and 1843.

Adjoining Sewell's land and purchased on the same date in 1843 was an 80‑acre parcel belonging to Michael Asher.

And in Washington County there is a marriage record for Michael Asher and Lucretia Caven three years later in 1846.

That same year, also in Washington County, Elizabeth Cavin married William Buchanan, and then ten years later in 1856, Martha Cavin married Marcus Buchanan. Martha named her first child, born in 1857, Sewil (sic)—likely in honor of the man whose name appears in the death notice. 

In the 1850 census, Martha—then age 17—is enumerated in the household of William Cavin, age 61, and Mary, age 58, in Marrs Hill, Washington County, Arkansas.

These records leave me wondering: was Sewell an older unrecorded son of William and Mary, remembered only in the quiet ways families keep their dead alive, by naming a son after him.

No additional records for Sewell Cavin have surfaced so far.

Unfortunately, the only records I have found for a Cherokee woman by the name of Jane Ketchum, are all dated well after the date of her death.

Even if very little of Jane’s story remains in the written record, the fact that Sewell died in the manner he did on the day after her demise, shows how deeply she mattered to him. Even without documentation, the impact of her life is unmistakable.

And this brings me back to Mr. William D. Shaw. Several records indicate that he was involved in Indian affairs. He appears to have been associated with the Western Creek Agency, and he was also active among the Cherokee at Fort Gibson. While no census record can be found confidently as him. He does appear in several military‑related accounts as a blacksmith, in the testimony of various government proceedings and the Gilcrease Museum preserves a note requesting that he "pay Drew and Fields $17.46" in part of their John Drew Manuscript Collection. I also found a surviving letter in the Gilcrease Museum’s online collections revealing that Shaw corresponded very personally with John Drew, they were more than mere associates, they were family friends.

Other records in the Gilcrease collection mention Shaw alongside the name Lanigan. Researching these names together gave me the bigger picture. They were the proprietors of the Mercantile at Fort Gibson. 

Times Record, Fort Smith, Wed, Feb 5, 1913, Page 6

The online library of Texas Tech also has a letter from Alfred B Green returning their license to "trade with the Cherokees".

Living amongst the natives in Indian Territory very few typical genealogy records have been found. So, I decided to search more diligently in old newspapers and in doing so have been able to piece together a much more complete picture of his life and more importantly his family, individuals who would otherwise be lost and forgotten: his very own son, Houston R. Shaw, who died in 1843 after a three‑week illness, his wife, Delilah Rogers Shaw who died 26th Feb 1857 and another son Robert G. Shaw, who died in Nov 1859.

Perhaps this is why Shaw published the death notice for Sewell Cavin and Jane Ketchum—because he had known the ache of personal loss and understood how fragile remembrance could be in a time when society was less connected, and records could all too easily be forgotten to history.

Arkansas Intelligencer
Van Buren, Arkansas • Sat, Dec 30, 1843Page 3

The St Louis Republic, Fri Dec 23, 1859

The St Louis Republic, Thur March 19, 1857

Weekly Arkansas Gazette, Sat March 14, 1857

Every so often, a small clue—a name, a line of print, a forgotten notice—reveals a life worth remembering. This post begins with one such clue: a death notice written by William D. Shaw, a man whose own story began as elusive as those he tried to preserve.

In gathering these fragments, we do what Shaw once did: we carry their names forward, so they are not forgotten.

The Unforgotten -- Ransome Collins

Welcome to a new series about the unknown, yet unforgotten people I encounter through genealogy research. These are individuals for whom few records remain—many who likely didn’t reach adulthood, left no descendants, and are otherwise lost to time.

One of them is young Ransome Wilson, the firstborn son of Cinth
a Jane, named after her father, Ransome Collins.

Cintha Collins married Charles Wilson in Benton County, Arkansas, in 1872.

Over the next six years, they had three sons: Russel Ransome, Francis Marion, and Robert Elisha.

By 1880, Charles was no longer in the picture. The census lists Cintha as divorced, living in Hico, Benton County, just below her father’s household. Her boys were then ages seven, four, and one.

Eight years later, tragedy struck, when thirteen-year-old Ransome didn’t return home after a Saturday evening hunt. His body was found in the woods the next day by a local newspaperman, J. Van Butler. The coroner ruled the cause of death as an accidental discharge of the young man's gun.

Pineville News 30 March 1888

No gravestone for Ransome appears in any of the local cemetery records. But his maternal grandparents, the grandfather for whom he was named, are buried in Hico Cemetery. It seems likely that Cintha would have laid her son to rest near her own parents.

Sadly, the original Hico Cemetery was desecrated in the early 1970s during a city utility expansion. The stones were removed and discarded, and the graves were shoveled over. When residents learned what was happening, they demanded the project be stopped and the headstones returned. But most had already been destroyed. With no way to identify the exact locations of the remaining graves, a monument was erected, and the few salvageable stones were placed in a circle.

It’s plausible that Ransome Wilson is among the “unknown” listed on that memorial sign.