In the Best of Families: Biel-Goodwin Tragedy and Shame in 1900
From In the Best of Families: Biel-Goodwin Tragedy and Shame in 1900 by Jean Goodwin Messinger with Carole (Biel) Graft, 2009 White Pelican Press, ISBN978-0-615-32045-8 S 84 pages | soft cover | $11.95
A True Story of Murder and Attempted Murder in a Well-to-do Family
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Table of Contents - click here
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xiii
Introduction xv
I. My Beaver Dam 1
2. Change 5
3. Discovery 9
4. The Family 13
5. Lost Lake 19
6. Revelations 27
7. Researching 37
8. Interim Courtroom Appearances 41
9. The Trial 47
10. The Lean Years 61
11. Aftermath 65
12. A Mere Oversight 71
13. The Rest of the Story 75
Preface xiii
Introduction xv
I. My Beaver Dam 1
2. Change 5
3. Discovery 9
4. The Family 13
5. Lost Lake 19
6. Revelations 27
7. Researching 37
8. Interim Courtroom Appearances 41
9. The Trial 47
10. The Lean Years 61
11. Aftermath 65
12. A Mere Oversight 71
13. The Rest of the Story 75
This is a true story based on the author's paternal grandparents' drama in southern Wisconsin, where the family owned a prosperous farm and inn at Lost Lake (still a popular bar and restaurant), near Beaver Dam. Grandpa was a successful entrepreneur who took up with one of his female employees. Rather than divorce Grandmother, mother of his five young children, he pushed her into the well, a common way at the time to get rid of an unwanted wife. The book recounts the social setting of this tragedy. Grandmother's rescue, his trials and final incarceration, the family's poverty as Grandmother struggled as a helpless quadriplegic to raise the children. An interesting aspect of this story, which was the most notorious Wisconsin scandal in the media of the day, was that the author first learned of it nearly eighty years later.