The Tallent Connection

Where have I been and how is the book coming along? With due diligence I have been indexing away. With roughly 1500 people (along with numerous cities, towns, mountains, streams, boats, cemeteries, etc.) mentioned, I am only about 1/3 of the way done, much to the disgust of Mary Frances, who wants this project completed. I say "due diligence" with hesitancy, as my "diligence" has recently been anything but "due." You can blame Matilda ("Tillie") Wehner, daughter of Lorenz, who was not very careful in choosing her three husbands: John B. Tallent, Arthur E. Cooney, and David Colburn Shelton. She had a knack for picking grooms who did not long survive-less than 4 years of marriage with John, two or three years with Arthur, and an incredible (for Tillie) 15 or so years with David. Short marriages mean few records, loads of research, and lots of uncertainty. Husbands 2 and 3 died at respectable ages, 65 and 76. But Husband 1 died at a very young 24. He was shot multiple times in Jacksonville, Florida, by James M. Kelly, an off-duty policemen, but surprisingly died of his wounds in St. Louis. James Kelly was charged with and convicted of murder. (His story is told in the book Vivien M. L. Miller, Crime, Sexual Violence, and Clemency, University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 218-225. Anyway, after a lot of difficult, time-consuming, frustrating work, I have finally been able to write about the life and death of Husband 1, John B. Tallent, though not without a number of doubts. The story of John, his father, Thomas Tallent, his mother, Lavina Elizabeth Eaves, and all the other people involved (Enoch McFarland, Walter McFarland, Ed Gunn, Mary Tallent, Pearl Tallent, and others) are presented over three pages of the book, too long to put here. To all those to whom I promised copies of Bier und Brot, the Wehners of Southeast Missouri, you will get them, but not as soon as I had hoped. Then you will be able to find out exactly what happened to John B. Tallent in Jacksonville. Now, back to indexing.