larceny – jen's ancestors

6628510059_d2cc6f2696_z — No, this is not Frank. Just a mugshot that is a few years newer than I would like, but you get the jist.

In March of 1889 Frank Cross, my notorious cousin of past posts, found himself in trouble. Surprise! Not.

In this case we find him in the newspaper under court goings on. Whatever could he have done now?:

Circuit Court — Justice French’s Court.
People vs. Frank Cross, larceny of an axe on complaint of Elihu B. Averill, pleaded guilty on the 11th and sentenced to pay a fine of $5.00 and in default of payment to ten days in jail. The fine was not paid and commitment was issued today.1

So Frank, being short of blunt, or just cheap, thought that he would pass on paying his fine. The court had no problem having him picked up and sent to the hoosegow in lieu of payment. A day or two later this notice appeared in the newspaper:

Frank Cross tired of prison life and went before Justice French and paid up his fine after a few hours in the jail.2

Now that’s a knee slapper! Maybe he didn’t realize how hard it would be to get a drink in jail.

Sources:

The Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph, Thu Feb 28, 1889, page 7, col 3
The Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph, Fri Mar 1, 1889, page 7, col 1

Asa Newell Lyon, the only surviving child of Newell and his wife Arrietta, was born in 1848 in Burlington, Vermont. When I was researching his background, in an effort to find out more about Esther, I found that he was living in St. Louis, Missouri by 1870 working in an advertising agency, at the age of 21, and in later years he was working in a tailor shop, always as a clerk. He spent the rest of his life in St. Louis eventually marrying and dying there.

I was curious about why he might have moved all that way from home, when I ran into an article in the New York Herald from September of 1874.

Court of General Sessions.
Larcenies.

Asa N. Lyon, who was indicted for stealing, on the 10th of July, four coats, worth $80, the property of the Wilde Brothers, No. 452 Broadway, pleaded guilty to an attempt at grand larceny. In consequence of the previous good character and the respectable connections of the prisoner His Honor sent him to the Penitentiary for six months instead of to the State Prison.

Asa, grandson of Asa Lyon, a former representative of Vermont, found out that having well known and ‘rich’ relatives sure helps grease the wheels of justice in your favor. HIs father had died in 1868, and his mother remarried to Ardin Styles. I am sure that his incarceration was an embarrassment for him, and the family, as he high-tailed it back to a far away city, where no one knew his family or his “respectable connections.”