Hi everyone! I'm one of the new kids on the block. I just joined the List this weekend. My name is Jennifer Davis, and I live in Rice, VA. Unfortunately I join you from the darker side of Bearss. I know very little about the family, but my closest connection is someone I think a lot of people have wished they could forget. My husband's grandfather was George Bearss, born in 1872. George died in 1958, in a nursing home in Port Huron, MI, but had spent much of his life incarcerated. Thanks to a relative still living in Michigan I have received copies of newspaper articles that detailed a serious, terrible incident. On December 23, 1904, George visited an aunt's house in Berville, MI. According the articles printed in the Port Huron Daily Herald, his aunt, Mrs. Abel Brown, went to the cellar to get George some cider. He approached her "with the vilest purpose in mind," and there was a struggle. He ended up bludgeoning her about the head with a whiffletree and cutting her throat. George was sentenced to life in prison in solitary confinement with hard labor in Marquette Correctional Center. The judge who sentenced him, according to the article, had representing him previously in a wife-beating charge, of which he was acquitted. The article said that 5 weeks prior to the murder, his wife and 10-year-old daughter had run away with another man. George was paroled at some point. I believe by Gov. Green (1927-1930). However, it is rumored by some family members that he was later arrested for robbing the Michigan National Bank. I have not found real evidence of that incident. George later married (I guess) a Maybelle Grace. That was my husband's grandmother. However, Maybelle divorced George at some point and married a Davis who adopted the children. It is also rumored that Maybelle was Native American. She only lived to be 46, and I have never seen a picture of her. I know nothing about her family other than she had a brother named Ed. The story of the murder was also published in the True Detective magazine in 1951. I have obtained a copy of that, thanks to the same relative, but I have not read it yet. I'm sure it was sensationalized for entertainment purposes. I'm sorry I have such a long, sad story, but I figured it was one that many had never heard. I'll try to come up with something more cheerful to share next time. Jennifer