This is a very sad story. I almost feel like I should not tell it, it is one of the “family secrets” that has been held close for several generations. It breaks my heart when I look at the photo above of a 22-year old that made choices that could not be undone, and how it changed the rest of his life.
I have met very few members of my mothers family, I remember going to California once where I met my Grandfather (Lisle), Grandma (Lily), and my Aunt Linda and her family. I may have met more Brown family members, but I was very little and don’t remember.
My mom had a letter from my grandma Lily’s sister Lydia among her family history research, and I photocopied it many years ago. It lists Lily’s parents birth and death dates, and also their children. Andrew Hertig (changed to Nelson) was born in Finland, March 24, 1873. I am not sure when he came to the US, but he married Jennie Starkman (also born in Finland) in Tower Minnesota in August of 1896. They lived in Michigan and had 12 children in 22 years. Jennie died in 1923 and Andrew in 1924, leaving 6 children under the age of 18, one of them was my grandmother.
I ran across this story when I was locating my Grandma Lily’s siblings on the Find-A-Grave website to verify the dates in the letter. One of the grave memorials I found was my mom’s Uncle Waino Nelson. On the memorial, there was a comment left by someone that stated: “The ‘truth’ is, Waino was accused and convicted of a crime he did not do.” I contacted the person that made the comment via the Find-A-Grave messages, and asked her what crime he had committed, she did respond, but only with “He was an innocent man.” After that, she disabled her comments, so I was unable to contact her again. This was just too much mystery for me, so I got to work.
I looked in a historical newspaper database to see if I could locate any information on the “crime”, and I found several articles dated September 1927. They described the arrest of Waino Nelson and Alfred Burr on the charge of armed robbery.
A little background on what was going on in the Nelson family at the time. The family was orphaned in 1924. The three oldest siblings Lempi, Lydia, and William were married, Waino was 19 and Grandma Lily was 17. My mom said that Lily went to live with a wealthy woman for several years before going to Butte. I don’t know where the younger siblings went after the death of their parents. It is possible that they were being taken care of by the married siblings. Waino was living in Detroit and working as a laborer, but found robbery more profitable. One of the articles below states that “He turned bandit to obtain funds for his brother and sister in Ishpeming.” Perhaps it was his way of helping out the family.
I figured that was all I was going to locate, but another member of the Nelson family had posted Waino’s death certificate, and it stated that he died in the Ionia Asylum. I did some research on the Asylum and found that it was actually the Ionia Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
I contacted Michigan State records and after some back and forth, they found Waino’s prison and trial records. The clerk that was helping me find them was shocked that they had such a long sentence for armed robbery.
Waino and Alfred kidnapped William Marschner at gunpoint in Detroit and forced him to drive them to Chicago. They took $10 in cash, a watch, pen, and pencil from him, totaling $30 in value.
Waino was sentenced to 20 – 40 years in prison and was sent to the Branch Prison in Marquette in October 1927. In 1930 he was transferred to the Ionia Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In those days, these hospitals were bad places, they performed shock treatments, sterilization, and lobotomies regularly. I have no idea why he was transferred from the prison in Marquette to Ionia and probably will never know. It could have been depression, it was a constant battle with his sister Lily. I have Grandma Lily’s death certificate stating alcoholism and depression as contributing factors to her death. I also noticed on his prison records that he had a venereal disease, possibly he had syphilis and that led to neurosyphilis, but again I am just guessing.
Waino died in 1940 of tuberculosis, the death records say that they had been treating him for 5 years, so he must have contracted it while he was in Ionia. He was buried in Ishpeming, here is his memorial on Find-a-Grave. The original comments that started my research were removed.
As I said before, I knew nothing of my mom’s maternal family. She spoke fondly of her Aunt Lyd, but that was it. If I asked her any questions about her mother, it usually ended up sending her into a three-day crying binge, so I stopped asking. I wonder how much of this story she knew about. Waino would have been transferred to Ionia around the time she was a baby, and he died when she was 11. Waino and Grandma Lily must have been close, as they were only 2 and a half years apart in age.