Every once in awhile you find that stories about your ancestors that just makes you go “WOW!” and this one about my great uncle Frederick Grim was just that. It’s a whopper!
Frederick Grim was brother to my great-grandmother, Laura Grim Lemaster. Laura was mentioned previously in a post about her father, Wallace Grim, writing a note to accompany her marriage record saying he was “giving up his girl.” Laura married Louis Borders in 1902 and he died just a few short years later in 1907.
According to the newspaper¹, in June 1908, Frederick apparently wasn’t thrilled with his sister’s new suitor. As Laura and John Kazee walked to church, Frederick stepped in between the two of them, causing John to push him down. Frederick got up and promptly stabbed him in the shoulder “with a big knife, inflicting a serious wound.” Whether he was just overly protective of his sister following the death of her husband or he truly didn’t like the man, that is an astounding thing for someone to do, even for a Lemaster. I mean, we have notorious hot tempers and short fuses but goodness… that’s a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?
I haven’t found any additional articles revolving around the incident, nor have I see Frederick arrested or jailed, so he must not have received much trouble. The victim, John Kazee, lived through the ordeal and was on the 1910 census living still as a widower with his parents.² Things also work out for Laura; she doesn’t stay single for much longer, marrying again in 1910 to my great-grandfather, William Arbie Lemaster. Perhaps Frederick approved because I don’t hear any family tales about him stabbing anyone else!
Works Cited:
¹”Cutting Affray at Lowmansville,” The Big Sandy News (Louisa, Kentucky), 12 June 1908, p. 1, col. 5; digital images, Newspapers.com (http://www.newspapers.com : accessed 22 February 2017).
²1910 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Kentucky, population schedule, Sitka, Enumeration District (ED) 00-81, sheet 8-A, p. 310 (stamped), dwelling 107, family 108, John Kazee; database with images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 March 2017), citing National Archives microfilm publication T624, roll480.