Still Finding Frank

 

Do you like solving mysteries? My previous blog presented a doozy: the fate of Frank Lowry. Family members pass down a tale that Frank (actual given name, “Franz Sigel”) was murdered, possibly by the husband of “Ethel Tingley,” a former flame, a girlfriend that committed suicide in a Terre Haute hospital using the broken glass from a vase given her by Frank when he visited her around 1917. The problem is that there are no records, nothing about the death of an Ethel Tingley in Terre Haute around that time. Nor can a connection be found between an Ethel Tingley and Frank. But perhaps we have now found what we have been looking for.

Despite his roles as a teacher, politician, and socializer, Frank was somewhat disreputable. He had, after all, abandoned his first wife. One relative states 

"In family lore, he was known as 'Uncle Frank the train robber.' That particular rumor has been pretty much debunked - however he wasn's a great guy."

A number of trees posted on Ancestry.com claim that Frank was married not twice, but three times, a third wife being an “Allie Tingley.” Unfortunately, as is usually the case, not a single reliable source is cited for this claim, and, when contacted, those in charge of the trees could not remember the story’s source. But might the claim arise from gossip or family tales based on some fact? Might there have been a connection, not necessarily a marriage, between Frank and an Allie Tingley? And the name “Tingley” is intriguing. Could “Ethel Tingley” have been “Allie Tingley”? But then who was Allie Tingley?

In Clark Co, Illinois, there lived in the late 1800s an Alfaretta Tingley, usually called “Allie.” Her story is told on pp. 219-220 of Henry’s Children, The Tapscotts of the Wabash Valley. Allie had connections with Wrights, Lowrys, and Tapscotts. And, in 1880 both she and Frank Lowry, teenagers, were living in Martinsville Twp. They had to have known each other.

Allie did not marry Frank. She married Thomas Wesley Sanders in 1885, and, when Thomas died, she married William Eddy McDaniel in 1904. The McDaniels moved to Muncie, Indiana, and there, on 5 Jul 1917 the following was published in the Muncie Evening Press:

Mrs. Alfaretta McDaniels, age 50 years, residing at 516 B Street, Neely addition, Riverside, died in the Home hospital at 7:45 o'clock Thursday morning as a result of wounds inflicted Monday afternoon when she slashed her through the artery in her left wrist with a piece of glass. Coroner Downing held an inquest this afternoon and will return a verdict of suicide.

 

Mrs. McDaniels recently became violently insane and it was necessary to place her in the county jail for safekeeping while awaiting her commitment to the Easthaven hospital for the insane at Richmond, and it was there last week that she slashed her throat and wrist with a piece of broken glass taken from her cell window. She bled profusely notwithstanding she was hurried to the hospital and the loss of blood, and her already diseased condition resulted in her sinking slowly until death came. Mrs. McDaniels resisted efforts to help her and, if she were capable of any reasoning, probably was anxious to die.

Wow! We have a Tingley, who undoubtedly knew Frank Lowry, who died in an Indiana hospital by suicide using broken glass, in 1917. Does that story ring some bells? Can some of our readers help further unravel Frank’s finale?