Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What is the Most Unusual Cause of Death You have Discovered?

 From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

        1)  What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors? 

       2)  Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook status post. Please leave a link on this post if you write your own blog post. 

Here's mine:

Out of the more than 33,000 people in my family tree, I have only entered cause of death for 442 of them!  So right off, I see a huge hole in my tree I need to fill in!  

My 442 causes of death are mostly mundane; just the usual Bright's Disease, heart attacks, infections, gunshot wounds, and automobile accidents.  All sad, but not unusual.  I could not think of or find any unusual causes of death among my direct ancestors, so I had to branch out to the entire tree.  Who I managed to find is not even a direct relative - it's a cousin's wife - and the cause of death is similar to Randy's 2nd great-grandfather's!  

Mildred Faye Hutton (1898-1942) was married to my 5th cousin, Charles Rex Ivie, in 1920 in Emmett, Gem County, Idaho.  (Charles is my cousin on my maternal side, descended from the Hessers, who originally came from Germany.)  Faye was 22 years old when she and Charles married.  The little marriage announcement in the paper sounds as if they were very excited to get married:

Published April 15, 1920 in the Emmett Index, Emmett, Idaho

Alas, it appears that Faye and Charles divorced between 1930-1935.  On the 1940 census, Faye is listed as a lodger and divorced in a new town.  She was living in that same town in 1935, also according to the 1940 census.

She was only 43 years old when she passed away on June 22, 1942. According to her Idaho death certificate, Faye died of "Status Epilepticus due to Nerve Syphilis."  The Status Epilepticus had come on in the last 48 hours before her death and was due to the "Neuro Syphilis" which she had for 2 years.

Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1967 from Ancestry.com

I googled this cause of death, and this is what I learned:

Status epilepticus is when someone has a seizure that lasts longer than 5 minutes, or if they have more than one seizure without returning to a normal level of consciousness between episodes. It can lead to permanent brain damage or death. Status epilepticus is very rare.  

--https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/

Neurosyphilis is a bacterial infection of the brain or spinal cord. It usually occurs in people who have had untreated syphilis for many years.

Causes

Neurosyphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria. Neurosyphilis usually occurs about 10 to 20 years after a person is first infected with syphilis. Not everyone who has syphilis develops this complication.

There are four different forms of neurosyphilis:

• Asymptomatic (most common form)
• General paresis
• Meningovascular
• Tabes dorsalis

Asymptomatic neurosyphilis occurs before symptomatic syphilis. Asymptomatic means there aren't any symptoms.

Symptoms

Symptoms usually affect the nervous system. Depending on the form of neurosyphilis, symptoms may include any of the following:

• Abnormal walk (gait), or unable to walk
• Numbness in the toes, feet, or legs
• Problems with thinking, such as confusion or poor concentration
• Mental problems, such as depression or irritability
• Headache, seizures, or stiff neck
• Loss of bladder control (incontinence)
• Tremors, or weakness
• Visual problems, even blindness

     -- Medline Plus (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000703.htm)

Of course I do not know what Faye's symptoms were and thus how progressed her condition was.  However, from my research, it appears the disease was advanced.  Syphilis has been all but eradicated thanks to penicillin.  Unfortunately it didn't come soon enough for Faye as penicillin was only first given in February 1941.  While that was 16 months before her death, I imagine that her condition may have been so far advanced that it was too late for the medicine to help.  

Note: It is important to consult a healthcare professional for an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment if you experience any of the symptoms listed above.  All I know is what I read on the Internet.  I purposely left the hyperlinks from the Medline website in case anyone wanted to view it themselves.  

So while poor Faye is not a direct line ancestor, she is still a part of my family tree.  I had never heard of this condition before.  I learned quite a bit writing this blog post.   

A milestone and the book that got me there

 Since I arrived in Augusta, I have had more time to do genealogy research.  I have several projects going at once and a list of many more I want to do.  One of the projects I have finally started is entering Drake relatives from this book into my family tree:

Descendants of Exum Drake

Volume III

Descendants of

Francis Bryant Drake

and

Selina King

by

Robert Eldon Drake, M.D.

1977

As you can see, the book is ancient now.  I have owned this copy for probably 25-30 years or more myself.  Yet I have never gone through it and added the research to my own tree.  So I started a couple of weeks ago and with mixing it up with another  project I have going, I haven't gotten bored.  I have probably entered 300+ names at this point and am only on page 216 of 646 pages.  

Now I know some people don't put distant cousins on their tree, but I do.  I have 8th cousins in my Family Tree Maker software.  This book, being from 1977, only goes up to my 4th cousins, 1x removed, so it is really valuable information and worth it to me.

Dr. Drake (who is my 3rd cousin, 1x removed) has passed on now.  I got this copy by contacting his wife and probably received one of the last printed copies.  I now wish I had gotten other volumes.  I will have to try to find them in a library one day.  

Anyway, I was busy adding descendants into my software, and I hit a milestone.  I added the 33,000th person into my tree!  That's a lot of relatives!  I know some genealogists (Randy Seaver comes to mind.) who have 3 times or more of that number in their trees.  Mine is a work in progress.  

The lucky #33,000 was Nina Maxine Scott (1923-2008).  She was the wife of my 4th cousin, Allen Dwight Thigpen (1922-1976).  

Allen Dwight Thigpen

1942

Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of Nina, but I will share what I learned about her today.

Nina Maxine Scott was born  March 5, 1923 in Colleton County, South Carolina.  Her parents were William Harrison Scott and Jennie May Wilson Scott.  At some point, the family moved south, and Nina graduated from Chapman High School in Apalachicola, Franklin County, Florida.  I would guess that is where she met her future husband, Allen, since he lived in Apalachicola and graduated from the same high school.  Nina would have graduated about 1941, and she attended the Jones Business College in Jacksonville, Florida.  Allen would have graduated about a year before Nina, attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, and joined the military in 1942.  

Meanwhile, Nina's family headed west to Louisiana and Missouri.  I am not clear if she joined them or just went there to have her wedding, but on May 6, 1944, Nina and Allen got married in Neosho, Missouri.  They were married in the home of the pastor of the local First Methodist Church.  The ceremony took place on a Saturday afternoon.  The bride wore "navy blue crepe and her accessories were of white.  She wore a corsage of white orchids."  This sounds like a war time, quickly executed wedding, perhaps because the groom must ship out soon.  Allen was stationed at Camp Crowder, Missouri at the time, where he was attending radio school.  The bride and groomed settled at home at 116 Jasper Street in Joplin, Missouri after the wedding.  

Their first child, Laura, was born June 11, 1947.  Then were was a gap of time where I could not locate where they lived or if Allen was still in the military.  In 1957, they arrived in Crestview, Florida.  It was there that their second child, Scott, was born on May 1, 1958.  Scott's birth announcement does mention that the couple was "formerly of Chattahoochee" (Florida) so evidently they lived there before arriving in Crestview.  On December 15, 1959, Allen and Nina welcomed twin boys, Michael and Mark.  This completed their family.  

Both Nina and Allen operated an insurance agency (ies).  Nina's obituary states she owned the Thigpen Insurance Agency, whereas Allen's obituary said he owned Steele Insurance Agency.  Surely they didn't compete with each other.  

Allen died in Crestview in 1976.  Nina lived there until 1983.  I know she lived in Sandy Springs, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, in an assisted living facility at the end of her life.  Her son, Scott, lived in Atlanta, so she must have moved there to be near him.  

Nina passed away November 7, 2008 and was laid to rest next to Allen at Live Oak Memorial Park in Crestview.  

Here is our relationship chart that shows exactly how and through whom we are related:

It never fails to excite me to learn about a "new" relative!