Out of Place

My Campbell relatives have been very instrumental in helping to found this country. I am very proud to say that they are part of my family. But there is always that one person in a family that makes the rest of us look bad.  This week I am going to write about an ancestor that I found in a place in which I never expected. Prison. 

His name was John Richard Campbell (1891-1939). When John was twenty-six years old in 1917 he enlisted in the military and was discharged in 1918 during WWI. According to the census he had various occupations from working in a coal mine to carpentry work. 

In 1922 my great great uncle married Mary Bearden, a widow and lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mary passed away in 1926 and that is when John's life started going downhill. 

By 1929, John was "peddling dope" (morphine) on the streets and tried to sell the drugs to a police officer. Whoops! Needless to say, he served time for this crime. 

I guess John didn't learn his lesson. In 1934, he was again in jail for pick pocketing a man. John stole a bank book containing 55.25 in cash and three blank checks. With one of the checks my great great uncle tried to buy a suit. This time John was sentenced for larceny and taken to a workhouse called Silverdale. He was sentenced for eleven months and twenty nine days. 

This man must have had a cement head because John just didn't learn his lesson from being in prison twice before. I guess three times is a charm. This time John was arrested for attempted burglary in April 1938. Again, John was sent to Silverdale workhouse and sentenced again for eleven months and twenty nine days. 

However, there was no getting out of the workhouse this time. On January 17, 1939 John, 47, was hit in the head with a shovel by Noah Moore, who was only nineteen at the time. The two men had a fight in the county gravel pit in East Chattanooga. John passed away on the 28th from cranial injuries. 

I wish that I knew more of my great great uncles back story. It would be interesting to know why he chose his life of crime after Mary passed away.