Sometimes a search for the mundane reveals a startling event. Sometimes that event makes sense in the context of a situation, and sometimes...it doesn't make sense in the context of any situation!
The subject of this week's prompt (Random) is one Roy Hudson. Roy is what I guess you might call a peripheral relative. He was briefly married to my great grandfather's sister, Nettie, but their marriage did not produce any children. Ancestry simply labels him as "husband of great grand aunt." My random discovery occurred when I tried to find legal documentation of the termination of their marriage.
If you want a bit of background on Nettie, it might help to read my previous post concerning her multiple marriages. All you need to know about Roy, though, is that Nettie married him in Caruthersville, Missouri, in 1915, but on January 10, 1918, Nettie married her third husband, Walter Miller. In my attempt to uncover a documented divorce for Nettie and Roy, I instead stumbled upon something that can only be described as completely random...and totally bizarre.
I wish I knew. Here's what I do know. While the article suggests a possible suicide, this is not Roy's fate. By the 1920 census, he has remarried and is living in East St. Louis with his new wife. He dies of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1929.
As I have never found a follow-up article concerning Roy, I have a few hypotheses concerning this most unusual disappearance:
1. Clearly, Nettie had found someone new. Maybe Roy was beside himself. It is possible that Roy contemplated suicide down by the river, disrobed, and - as the second article suggests - found the water far too cold for such activities. If that was the case, though, why didn't he put his clothes back on?!
2. Various articles concerning Nettie, as well as later divorce documents, indicate she had a violent streak. Maybe she and Roy had already separated (there is no indication as to whose home he was missing from), but he wanted to make sure that he cut ties with her completely. Clearly, this wasn't a suicide, but maybe he wanted it to look like a suicide.
3. Stay with me, here. Is it possible that Roy and Nettie planned this deception? I don't know what was necessary for a divorce in this era and area. Maybe it was simpler to fake a death than it was to obtain a divorce? If so, Nettie certainly didn't wait long to take advantage of her 2nd husband's presumed demise.
4. The man who tries to claim Roy's clothes? Hard to say, but if hypothesis 2 or 3 is correct, Roy certainly couldn't claim the items himself. Maybe he enlisted the help of a friend.
That's a whole lot of "maybes," and I doubt I will ever find the actual answer to why Roy Hudson's clothes randomly appeared beneath a fishing dock or why he randomly disappeared in January of 1918. As always, I will keep looking.
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