Local Author Series: John Jeffire Reads ‘Broke‘

John Jeffire is an esteemed author & poet, born and raised in Detroit. He has two novels, and two works of poetry published--along with several short stories (like the one featured on this podcast!). Jeffire has a deep reverence for the city of Detroit and its history. While Jeffire has a literary background, he's also a teacher / wrestling coach. And today's story taps into the sport of wrestling--while also illuminating a piece of Jeffire's family history. 

http://www.writeondetroit.com/

"A few months ago I learned of an ancestor named George Riley Meadows. I took some of the basic foundational details of his biography and relocated the setting to Detroit at roughly the same time period (for "Broke"). I have learned that a number of my ancestors ended up in Eloise, so writing "Broke" was a way for me to tell many of their stories at once. I've attached a picture of George and his wife Matilda as well.

 

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George Riley Meadows' life was short and tragic. He married Mary Malinda Totman in 1878, and they were living together with six children when he was involved in a mishap. A miner and farmer, he and some work friends were trying to see who could lift the most weight when something "broke in his head." After this, he was the victim of seizures and his mental faculties were never right again. His condition became so bad that on 21 November 1898 his wife divorced him, almost unheard of at the time, and he was confined to the Osawatomie State Hospital (originally the Kansas State Insane Asylum) where he resided for two years. Listed as a farmer and a Protestant, his diagnosis read that he suffered from grand mal seizures. This diagnosis included "incomplete dementia" and "insanity."

 

At age 45, he was transferred to the Kansas State Home for Epileptics in Parsons, Kansas, on 19 Oct 1903, which received most its patients from Osawatomie and the Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecile Youth in Lawrence. He was patient #79 of the 110 admitted that day. His former wife Matilda continued to visit him; she did not mention her former husband to family members but they recall her returning from a visit she made by wagon to "someone" in an institution inconsolable and in tears. He died at the institution and was buried in Row 1, Space 7 in its cemetery. It seems that the lifting accident he suffered likely caused a brain aneurysm from which he never recovered and there was no treatment at the time but to lock him up in an institution.