Back to the story: Rynd Jay Lawder murdered 11/27/1905

It's taken me a long time to get back to the story.  In yoga class today, the theme was related to the Day of the Dead (yesterday and today) and the importance of remembering our ancestors with gratitude while we learn from them, "alchemize the negative" and move ahead.  I took it as a mission to start up with the blog again.  OK, remember John F. Lawder (1833-1908), the attorney in Pleasant Hill, Papa's grandfather, and father of the 4 deaf children?  He had seven siblings (all born in Ohio), the youngest one being Rynd Edward Lawder (1837-1890).  Both John and Rynd served in the Civil War but Rynd seemed to do very well.  He ended the war with the rank of colonel, was awarded 320 acres in Texas as a reward for his service and got a plum government job in eastern Missouri, Revenue Collector for Audrain County.  He married Hannah and used some of his money to acquire a mine near the Salt River.  Their youngest of their three sons was named Rynd J., called "Jay".  A promising young man, Jay went to U. of Tennessee and played football (right end) before coming home to take over the mine.  Maybe too sure of himself, this "bachelor and member of a prominent and wealthy family in Mexico Missouri" , and took liberties when pretty 26 year old Alva Bailey came into the mine office one day.  She was collecting the wages for her husband, Edwin Bailey.  Jay evidently won her "with a single kiss"  .... and her husband learned of the affair in late 1905.  Knowing that Jay Lawder would be boarding the train to Chicago on November 27th, Edwin Bailey takes a gun and waits for him, shooting Lawder dead at the station.  How do I know these juicy details.... they were reported in newspapers all over the country every day of the trail the following year.  From Fairbanks, Alaska to the Washington Post and the NY Times.  The dramatic finale came in September 1, 1906 when the jury voted to AQUIT the Baileys (husband and wife were charged in conspiracy) on the basis of "the unwritten law".  I kid you not.  Honor crimes not just in Sicily, but in the Show Me state in the 20th c.  [You can read the whole article if you are an ancestry.com member: Fairbanks Daily Times, Sept. 2, 1906, Headline: "Defense--Unwritten Law".] There's something ambivalent in the portrayal of the lovely Alva, now pregnant with Jay's child.  For example she has NAMED THE BABY 'JAY'.  Ah romance.

So what has this to do with us?  Jay's father and Papa's father were cousins, so Papa and Jay were like Jaymie Hyde and Nina Chernoff in their connection.  Could be close or far depending on the family communication.  Did Papa know of it?  The whole country was following it; could the Lawders just a few hundred miles away in the same state not know of it?  Papa was just 17 years old at the time of the murder and trial.  Yet, to Nancy Wolcott's knowledge, Papa never spoke of this story or any other Lawders other than his mother and sister.  His grandfather John, uncle to Jay, was still alive and practicing law, as was Papa's father Paul (1865-1915).  How could a story teller, a former newspaper writer, not use a story as good as this one if he knew it?