Talented Tuesday: Charles L. Crabill, Playwright

Charles L. Crabill spent part of his life as a policeman, and then worked for the state at a truck weighing station.

But early in his adult life, he wrote and produced a play called "Everybody's Hotel."

That's my Grandpa on the far left.

When we visited the Strasburg Museum during my latest visit to Virginia, we found that they had a copy of the playbill.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have a copy of the script. I wish I could read it!

Military Monday: Emanuel Crabill

Today's topic was, once again, one of the ones suggested by Geneablogger. There are a whole raft of choices for daily blogging prompts, so I can choose some of the others later. But Military Monday was the one that caught my eye for today.

Emanuel Crabill (1823-1880) was a Civil War veteran. My grandfather, Charles Crabill, was very proud of him. Emanuel's picture was proudly displayed in Grandpa's den and he talked about him often.

Once again it turns out that I didn't have the whole story.

From http://www.vagenweb.org/shenandoah/civilc.html we can see that Emanuel Crabill had been a member of the 136th Virginia Militia, Co. A, prior to the war. He became part of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, Co. B, the "Independent Greys," or "Toms Brook Guard." There were several other Crabills in his company. Emanuel was the first captain in this company. It was mustered into service on July 8, 1861, according to http://www.stonewallbrigade.com/33E/eg1861/eg1861.html.

My aunts told me that Emanuel was frequently sick, so he never got to see much in the way of action. He resigned on August 6, 1861. From that time on, he fought the war in his own way at home. He would frequently hide in trees and shoot any stray Yankees who wandered past his hiding spot.

Black Sheep Sunday: Jack Dwight Hisey

I'm just getting started on this blog, having discovered Geneablogger. It's great because they present several blogging prompts to help get you started on what to blog on.

The Hisey side of my family has some dark secrets. First off, there was James Dwight Hisey, who committed suicide in one of the outbuildings of his small property, in 1924. This caused his family immeasurable heartache, embarrassment and financial hardship.

Shortly after James's suicide, Jack Dwight Hisey was born. He had two siblings, both considerably older than him, and was probably spoiled as much as they could in their circumstances.

When Jack grew up he was married 3 times and was known as quite the womanizer. He died in 1967 of a gunshot wound. There is some argument as to exactly how the shooting occurred, but it is generally agreed that he was shot while he was at work at the grocery store where he was employed.

The story I generally heard (and only on occasion when I was growing up) was that he was shot by the husband of a woman he'd been secretly seeing.

My aunts recently related another version of that story, to wit: Jack was at work, and this irate husband came to find the person who'd been fooling around with his wife. When he asked the actual perpetrator who "so-and-so" was, the rascal pointed out Jack, and so Jack was shot instead of the person who actually did the fooling around.

I intend to do a little research in the local papers of the time to see if I can learn any further details. Murders are so rare in the upper Shenandoah Valley that I'm sure it would have gotten plenty of attention.