Every now and then my research takes me into the murky corners of history, inter-personal drama, and catastrophic tragedy, making it suddenly feel like I’m watching a binge-worthy Netflix series instead of doing my job. That’s when I reach for my phone or turn to my partner or ambush the barista at my local café, and ask: you want some juicy gossip?
I’m not a gossip, really. But sharing a series of unfortunate events that took place over a hundred years ago scratches an itch I didn’t know I had. Like the time I discovered that a 65-year-old man was likely poisoned not long after his second divorce from an 18-year-old woman.1 So of course, my friends and I had a field day arguing over whether it was wife #1 or wife #2 who done him in.
Or this one, from The Springfield Daily Republican on 28 May 1869: A man’s head was chopped off in a sausage factory. The reporter astutely notes: “An inspection of the scene of the murder is not likely to give members of the court and jury an increased hankering for sausage as a regular article of diet.”2
You can’t make that up. I stumbled across that gem while researching a more complicated 1868 murder case involving a 55-year-old woman accused of adultery who was later convicted of murdering her son-in-law, theoretically to keep him quiet about the allegations against her in divorce proceedings.3 Her daughter, the wife of the murdered man, was also initially arrested, but released after she provided sufficient ammunition against her mother for her to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.4 It’s got all the elements of a salacious true-crime drama: whispers of adultery, inter-familial finger-pointing, and the shamefully late reintroduction of evidence that suggested—after the mother died in the House of Corrections at East Cambridge, her daughter never once visiting her—that she may have been innocent all along.
“Was She Innocent?” The New Zealand Herald (Auckland, NZ), Thu 17 Apr 1879, p. 3. LINK
My network of willing historical gossipers (and a fair number of unwitting bystanders) gobbled that one up for breakfast.
But this time, I knew there was more. There always is, of course. Every headline has a back-story, a context that complicates and challenges initial impressions. And as researchers, it is easy to become emotionally invested and intellectually curious about the intimate details of our subjects’ lives—as it should! A shocking headline scratches that gossipy itch, but ideally it also inspires rigorous research, inviting us to take a closer look at those less-traveled historical corners and record repositories.
I had been researching generations of this particular family, the Manns, for nearly a year, and as a result I had grown to care deeply about them. Most of them had been farmers or worked in the shoe and boot industry in Norfolk County, Massachusetts for generations. They left a small footprint, mostly uneventful probate records, land deeds, and showed up as neighbors in tightly-knit family groups on census records. But this branch had a hard go of it. The convicted murderer, Nancy (Mann) Madan, and her husband, Lot Madan, were middle-aged parents of ten children when she was arrested; their youngest child was eleven years old at the time of the murder. Two months after the conclusion of her trial, her second-youngest son died of typhoid fever on the “school ship,” a Nautical Branch of the State Reform School in Massachusetts.5 One year after their son’s death and Nancy’s sentence to death (a sentence that was later commuted to hard labor for life in prison), her husband committed suicide, leaving one minor child behind.6 The remaining Madan children modified their last name to Ma Dan and scattered to other towns in Plymouth County, presumably desiring to leave their family’s painful past behind.
But the records remain, and not just the eye-catching headlines. Researching this case gave me not only the opportunity for top-notch historical gossip, but more importantly, this family’s misfortune became a treasure trove of primary source material for me. Due to their involvement in the court system and the Nautical Branch of the State Reform School, they led me to several collections of rich primary source material held at the Massachusetts Archives: Supreme Judicial Court Archives and Health and Human Services records. These kinds of records are not always easily accessible via popular database searches on AmericanAncestors.org, FamilySearch.org, or Ancestry.com, but they contain a wealth of information about individuals and the institutions within which many of our ancestors and the folks we research were managed by, from courts to state hospitals, prisons, and schools.
My investigation into this family is on-going and has led me to look more closely at the short-lived Nautical Branch of the State Reform School, which ran between 1859 – 1872.7 The Nautical School placed juvenile inmates between fourteen and eighteen years old from the Massachusetts Reform School on two ships, the Massachusetts and George M. Barnard, in order to “be instructed in seamanship and navigation, and if successful, transferred to outside shipping.”8 Records pertaining to this school, including a commitment register, and case histories of the boys are held at the Massachusetts Archives.
Reform School Ship Massachusetts, 1870.
I will always be an overly invested researcher, moved to learn more about the people I study because they inspire, shock, enrage, or delight me—and because they provide a truly unbeatable source for harmless gossip. But it turns out that gossip is a great motivator for some of the most rigorous primary source research. Uncovering what’s behind the headlines usually reveals the more interesting story.
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Massachusetts Databases at American Ancestors
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Notes:
1. Niles-Mann, marriage (1863), Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Records, 1840-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. LINK; Keros Niles, death (1866), Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. LINK
2. “Eastern Massachusetts,” The Springfield Daily Republican (Spring, Mass), Fri 28 May 1869, p. 4, accessed at Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/1064515832/?match=1.
3. “Morning News,” Fall River Daily Evening News, (Fall River, Mass), Tues 5 Oct 1869, p. 2. LINK; Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court, at the June Session 1869, in Boston, vol VI, p. 1 – 5; “Crime in Canton,” Fall River Daily Evening News (Fall River, Mass), Wed 22 Jul 1868, p. 2. LINK
4. “The Dedham Murderess Convicted,” The Springfield Daily Republican, (Springfield, Mass), Sat 22 May 1869, p. 8. LINK
5. Emery Whitfield Madden, Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Birth Records, 1840-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. LINK; Emery W. Madden, death (1869), Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. LINK
6. “Morning News,” Fall River Daily Evening News, (Fall River, Mass), Tues 5 Oct 1869, p. 2. LINK; “Eastern Massachusetts,” The Springfield Republican, (Springfield, Mass), Sat 19 Jun 1869, p. 8. LINK; Lot Maddan, Ancestry.com. U.S., Federal Census Mortality Schedules, 1850-1885, 1870, Stoughton, Norfolk, Massachusetts; Page: 392, [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. LINK; Eugene W. Madan, guardianship (1873), Norfolk County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1793-1877. Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. LINK; Lot Madan, probate (1873), Norfolk County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1793-1877. Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2019, Case no: 12111. LINK
7. “Record Group Number: HS8.06, Record Group Name: Massachusetts Nautical School,” Record Group HS: Health and Human Services, Massachusetts Archives, p. 141 LINK
8. “Record Group Number: HS8.06, Record Group Name: Massachusetts Nautical School,” Record Group HS: Health and Human Services, Massachusetts Archives, p. 141 LINK
