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.