MOAB

The other day I was looking for information on the daughter of my GGG Grandfather on my Father’s Mother’s side. I found information listing her children’s names. Then I stumbled over something online talking about one of her Daughter’s children. I was intrigued by one comment “…Mary’s brother was the infamous Charles Davis Lawson”. Well google is usually my friend so I googled the name and north carolina where they were born.

I had no idea when I hit enter what would come up…

On Christmas day of 1929 tobacco farmer Charles Davis Lawson murdered his family. Only one son survived because he’d gone to town for the day. The day before Charles took his whole family into town and bought them new outfits, trinkets and toys for the children, and had a family portrait made. His children’s ages were from 17 years to 4 months. It was horrifying.

I thought I can handle this and input the information into the tree. But then I sat there and looked at what I’d added and saw all of those death dates that were the same and started crying. The four month old… OMG.

The crime itself was horrible. A tragedy. But what really bothered me was the level of interest in it online. Page after page of links in google. Two books were written about it, the first one selling now for $300 on amazon and ebay, a dvd was made about the murders. There was a trailer for it on you tube. Not one but three ballads were written about it. The ghost freaks and true crime freaks are fascinated by it. A woman is writing/putting together what sounds like a freakin COFFEE TABLE book about it.

I know I want to go to someone’s house and see a coffee table book about a man shooting and clubbing his family to death on Christmas day. Don’t you?

It was too much. I turned off the genealogy program and closed google and quit for the day and tried to find something else to do.

Sometimes genealogy sucks.

Filed under: Hobbies & Shit
by MOAB