Photo Essay Series: The Story of Will Francoise Part I

Madge 1908: Will would've been young.

My grandma Alice loved a good horror story, even if she'd never admit to such wickedness. One she liked to talk about was of the Francois family. She had learned their story after she and my grandpa raided an estate sale after the elder of the family, Will, had passed away. The house, she told me, was a typical hoarder's den. Every newspaper, every fingernail clipping, every peach pit had been saved and was piling up in the empty house. Grandma told me with relish in her voice that this man's son Carroll had committed suicide. His daughter Robinette had been institutionalized for murdering her own children. "Slashed their throats..." she like to say. Among whatever items of value she and my grandpa found at the sale, she kept piles of photos, letters, and clippings in a box for many years, finally giving it to me before she left to live with my uncle in California. I brought it to my apartment in Ypsi, and one night while partying, my roommate and I went through it bit by bit, not expecting to find what we did. That collection of stuff, gifted to me by my grandma, has haunted me ever since, or I should say, the character of Will has haunted me. If I ever get a grant for a project, it will be to research what happened to this family and learn their story. In the meantime, I have to make do with what this stuff tells me.

This letter, from 1918, reads like a recommendation, except that it's addressed to Will, and the writer really overuses the word clean. Did Will decide he didn't need the recommendation? Or did he need something to verify his character for some reason? "I can say that he has always been a clean citizen with a clean mind and a clean character." And that's not the only time the word "clean" is repeated. Why did Will need someone to testify to his being clean so much?

From what I can tell, Will worked as a veterinarian. Possibly a surgeon...definitely as inspector. I get the sense from much of the materials that Will was often in charge of livestock...including the slaughter of cattle and pigs due to disease maybe? Anyway, livestock sanitation seems to be the main aspect of the job. The certificate he received from the state of Montana is from 1919, toward the end of the Spanish flu pandemic, but I don't know if those are related.

 This certificate from the Department of Agriculture is from 1915. $1400 per year for a probationary position. Next is a veterinary college prospectus is from after this time, so did Will get this position and then decide to become a vet? Or did he see potential for his son Carroll and save it for him?

 The letter from Michigan dated 1919, orders him to report for duty and seems to imply meat inspection. It does seem that the job was more related to the meat industry than animal health. I sense that Will wanted Carroll to join him in his profession. There were one or two letters sent to Will that were addressed to a Francois & Son veterinary practice and that was it. Did Carroll not want to have a job like his dad's? Why not?  The letter below is preceded by a telegram from the inspector in charge of virus-serum control.

I get the sense from a lot of these materials that a lot of what the job was about was slaughtering animals, and/or inspecting slaughtered meat. The postscript in this letter from his mother dated 1916 says "Maybe now we can have that bacon and maybe a ham between us..." Knowing what I know about the meat industry, I'm inspired to create a character in my mind who is ensconced in that industry and has his soul eaten away by it. (If I taught an environmental literature course, it would include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. Both are pretty searing critiques of the meat business.)

Will received lots of letters from what actually seems like two different people he called Mother. The long letter below is from a friend talks at length about slaughtering large numbers of hogs and cattle. This friend, who addresses Will as "Old Pal," seems to have met him while serving in the war, or at the job...I can't tell for sure. But the letter accounts numbers after huge numbers of dead cows and pigs, including those who were lost in an apparently catastrophic fire...the Kansas City Stockyard fire, which cost over a million bucks (in a time when people got $1400/yr) and was, according to the writer whose name might be George, "was of incendiary origin." Sure enough, two men were arrested in connection with burning the place down.

Interesting that one man arrested was German, at a time when we were just getting out of a war with Germany. (Actually, the Spanish Flu was thought to have been biological warfare by Germany...hmmm.)

 This friend wrote him a lot...and the nature of their friendship is interesting too. In an upcoming post, I'll show you.