Tag Archives: Genealogy

Memorial Day

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My great uncle Aubrey C. German, buried at Arlington National Cemetery, who stepped on a land mine at Normandy, and in the short-but-sweet words of my father, “that was the end of that.” My father was just two and a half months old when Aubrey was killed.

In the course of reading about my great-uncle Aubrey, I discovered something new about my great grandfather Raymond Lewis German (Aubrey’s father). Raymond had a first wife, Beulah, who died in childbirth in 1913 along with their first child, a boy. She was from what is now known as Linville, in Rockingham County, very close to where Eve went to school. According to her burial notes, Beulah’s brother-in-law, who was married to her older sister Myrtle, committed suicide the following day by drinking carbolic acid at her coffin. There had to be more the story than that. It’s a murder ballad variation waiting to be written, and it’s right there in my family history.

From the Washington Times, February 18, 1913:

Georgetown Resident Drinks Poison In Front of Casket of His Sister-In-Law


While a dozen relatives and friends gathered around the casket in which lay the body of Mrs. Beulah German in the parlor of the family home, 1355 Wisconsin avenue, Georgetown, shortly before noon today, Charles Corcoran, twenty-eight years old, brother-in-law of the dead woman, stepped into the room and ended his life by drinking a quantity of carbolic acid. As he came into the room with a small tumbler containing a white liquid, he said in a loud voice that he was going to kill himself. Those in the room looked at the tumbler and supposed it contained gin. A moment later Corcoran drained the glass and fell to the floor.