JANIS THORNTON
  • Home
  • Books
  • Janis
  • Pictures
  • Blog
  • Contact
    • Stay in the Loop!
  • Writer Resources

My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 15: Dee, Homer & Jesse McClure

9/27/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
​Jesse McClure laid down his son
And blew his brains out with a gun.
When he saw what he had done
He did it to his other son.
​
— Hoosier folk song, author unknown​
​​
Even Jesse McClure himself couldn’t explain why he’d done it. He knew only that several weeks before, his wife, Sarah, had left him and taken his boys — baby Dee, 2, and big brother Homer, 3. McClure was pissed. The morning of Sunday, October 25, 1903, stewing in a rented room at an Elwood boarding house, McClure downed a few shots of whiskey. It was all he needed to muddy what tiny speck of good sense the good Lord had given him.

​At high noon, he climbed into his rented horse-drawn carriage and headed north out of town. A couple hours later, he walked up to the house in West Liberty, where Sarah and the kids were staying with her sister, and banged on the kitchen door.
Picture
Picture
  Above: The despicable Jesse McClure
​
​  Left: Sarah & Jesse McClure in “happier” days
Her brother-in-law answered and told McClure, “Sarah don’t want to see you.” McClure’s blood boiled, and he yelled back, “Tell her to send my boys out. I wanna take ’em fer a buggy ride.”

Sarah let the boys go, which she soon regretted, and off they went, rolling down the road. Within the hour, Homer was dead, and Dee was barely clinging to life, both of them shot in the head by their loving daddy.
​

As for McClure, following a lucid moment during which he imagined a lynch mob with himself on the wrong end of the rope, he hightailed it for the Grant County sheriff’s office in Marion to turn himself in. The next day, he was transferred to the Tipton County jail, and was later tried in Tipton Circuit Court.

When a reporter asked McClure why he’d done it, he couldn’t answer. Instead, he shifted the blame to a higher power. “God told me to do it,” McClure said, “and He will take care of me.”

Although Homer had died instantly at his father’s hand, Dee, lingered in a coma for almost two weeks before he died. The boys were buried in the Knox Chapel Cemetery, located in the southwest corner of rural Grant County, two miles north of the Madison County line. According to newspaper reports, Dee was interred during a driving rainstorm as hundreds of friends and neighbors gathered in an outpouring of love.

Sarah McClure had little money and may have been unable to purchase headstones for her children, as none bearing their names can be found in the old cemetery today. When I visited Knox Chapel in mid-August of 2020, I studied every stone, hoping to find the McClure boys’ markers. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Many were so broken and worn, their engravings were no longer decipherable.

However, as I made my way through the grounds, two small stones, side by side, seemed to call to me. The time-worn names and dates chiseled into them long ago were impossible to read, so I selected them as proxy markers to represent the brief lives of the McClure boys. Who’s to say they aren’t the children’s actual stones anyway?

And what about the burial place of their father?

Ironically, less than four years after McClure — who soon became Indiana State Prison Inmate No. 2718 — had smugly told a reporter that God would take care of him, God followed through. However, it probably wasn’t what McClure had in mind. How could he have known that in those days, the I.U. School of Medicine wasn’t picky and would accept the remains of anyone, even a deplorable monster like him? ... Rest in pieces, Jesse McClure •
Picture
From the October 27, 1903 Muncie Morning Star
1 Comment
Zachary Kemp link
11/16/2022 01:13:09 pm

Stuff tax job scene ever test tree. Religious avoid project hospital rather him. Entire set box.
Seek effect office. Good age brother cost close animal carry.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    September 2020
    March 2020
    June 2019
    June 2017
    May 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014

    RSS Feed

     2020 - ROAD TRIP with the DEAD
    • Sept. 1 - STOP 1: Jesse Worley Osborn, Greentown
    • Sept. 3 - STOPS 2 & 3: Harry & Nellie Hiatt, Cicero
    • Sept. 5 - STOP 4: Walker & Enoch McClintock, Strawtown
    • Sept. 7 - STOP 5: Belle Sheridan Shenkenberger
    • Sept. 9 - STOP 6:
    ​Lt. William Wirt Daugherty

    • Sept. 11 - STOP 7: Mayor Henry C. Cole
    • Sept. 13 - STOP 8: Fairy McClain-Miller
    • Sept. 15 - STOP 9: Grover & Louisa Blake
    • Sept. 17 - STOP 10: Daniel Snider
    • Sept. 19 - STOP 11: A.J. Baker
    • Sept. 21 - STOP 12: Richard Gladden
    • Sept. 23 - STOP 13: Garnet Ginn
    • Sept. 25 - STOP 14: Dink Carter & the Agrue Family
    • Sept. 27 - STOP 15: Dee, Homer & Jesse McClure
    • Sept. 29 - STOP 16: Nora Coleman & Sepharna Gleason

    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
    2019 BLOG TOUR

    • June 13 — Interview,
    Diane Ascroft
    • June 14 – Character
    Q&A, Defining Ways
    • June 15 – Author Q&A,
    MJB Reviewers
    • June 16 – Character Post, StoreyBook Reviews 
    • June 16 – Author Q&A,
    A Place In The Spotlight

    • June 17 – Guest Post,
    Books Direct
    • June 18 – Guest Post,
    Brooke Blogs
    • June 19 – REVIEW
    Baroness’ Book Trove
    • 
    June 21 – Character Post, The Book Diva’s Reads
    • June 22 – REVIEW,  
    Brianne’s Book Reviews  • 
    June 23 – REVIEW,
    Christa Reads and Writes 

    • June 24 – Character
      Q&A, A Wytch’s Book Review Blog
    ​
    *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
    2017 BLOG TOUR
    • June 19 — Spotlight
      Celticlady's Reviews
    • June 20 — Review
      My Journey Back
    • June 21 — Spotlight
      Books, Dreams, Life
    • June 22 — Interview
      Annette Drake's Blog
    • June 23 — Review
      Back Porchervations
    • June 24 — Guest Post
      Island Confidential
    • June 24 — Guest Post
      Escape with Dollycas
    • June 25 — Interview
      Laura's Interests
    • June 26 — Interview
      Pulp and Mystery Shelf
    ​
    • June 26 — Review
    ​  Caleb & Linda Pirtle
    • June 27 — Spotlight
      Socrates' Book Reviews
    • June 27 — Spotlight
    ​  Blogger Nicole Reviews
    • June 28 — Spotlight
      Celebrating Authors
    • June 29 — Review
      Queen of All She Reads
    • June 30— Interview
      Teresa Trent Site
    • July 1 — Guest Post
    ​  StoreyBook Reviews
    • July 2 — Interview
      Deal Sharing Aunt
    • July 2 — Review
    ​  Nadaness in Motion
    ​
    • July 4 — Interview
      Gotta Write Network
    • July 12 — Review
    ​  A Holland Reads
    • July 19 — Guest Post
    ​  Gotta Write Network

    ​


    ​
    ​
Proudly powered by Weebly