John Donovan'S GHOST

John Donovan, circa 1891

Note: John's daughter Annie is mistaken for his sister in this account.

The developments in ancestral research and genealogy in recent years have been groundbreaking.  From the public availability of DNA testing to the digitizing of everything from newspapers to church registers to county and civic records, there has never been a time in history that we have been so close to understanding our past and the people who made us who we are.

For me personally, these new facts have affected me in the shape of my 2x Great Grandfather John Donovan.  For many years our family was under the impression that he simply decided to pick up one day and leave his wife and twelve children to return to his homeland of Wales.  It was an easy assumption, as at the same time of his disappearance in Scranton, a John Donovan of the same age did appear in the records of his home in Monmouthshire, including a death in 1909. 

John Donovan of course is a very common name and appears dozens of times in the records of Montmouthshire, so we were never sure.  But thanks to an increase in the digitizing of newspaper records from across the world, we now know that he did not go home to Wales, but rather left Scranton for Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he found work in his trade as a puddler for the American Steel Hoop company of Duncansville in December 1900.  

Although it's not clear when he left precisely, we do know that it was sometime between late 1898 and early 1900 for two reasons: his name appears in a Scranton city directory in 1898 and he was not present at the time of his wife's death from stomach cancer in February 1900. It is assumed that he left sometime in 1899 to find work and likely did other odd jobs around the area before coming to work at the American Steel Hoop company. 

For many years, the story ended with the mystery of John's disappearance, but sadly, the news of the time, now digitized, gives us the unfortunate detail (some of the accounts on the left). As reported in  On Saturday evening, February 18, 1901, John Donovan died on the train tracks near the Gaysport Bridge in Hollidaysburg.  

For several days following the death there was some speculation on the method of his passing. A co-worker, Thomas Baird, reported that earlier in the evening John had asked him for a loan of 25 cents, promising to pay him back at his next pay.  He obliged and didn't see him again. Another man, George Estep, reported seeing John laying on the tracks later in the evening "in a stupor" and yelled to him that he should move before he may be injured.

Though foul play was entertained briefly, further investigation by the coroner revealed that John Donovan had in fact chosen suicide by train.  It seemed that he did lay down near the tracks and placed his head across the rail.  The front portion of his head was shorn off, in what was surely a gruesome death.  

The county attempted to contact his family to come and claim his remains, but they were either unwilling due to family dispute or unable due to financial hardship.  He would be buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Hollidaysburg in a pauper's grave. With the help of the genealogical society in Altoona and the cemetery record keeper there, I've determined that there is no marker and no way of knowing precisely where he was laid to rest. 

I can't help but feel for the tragic John Donovan.  If we give him the benefit of the doubt, he left his family in order to find work. His wife died while he was away and just a year and six days after her death, he laid down on the tracks and took his life. Though he was estranged from his children and in spite of the fact that he was reportedly "a man of drinking habits", it seems he was truly heartbroken. 

For those who believe in spirits, I'll share a post script on this story.  My daughter had a gift when she was very young.  She often spoke to me about seeing things like "the man in the light" or calling me into her room late at night to "tell the man to go away".  A particularly noteworthy incident came one evening while we were sitting on the living room floor playing a board game.  I think she was about 4 or 5 at the time.  She looked up mid-game and said, quite plainly and with no alarm, "Mommy, why is that man's head going down the hallway?" We always thought it was a bit odd, just a head, but with her other sightings of the time, we chalked it up to special sight or just a child's imagination.  

Now years later, with this new information, we can't help but wonder if her bodiless visitor was her great-great grandfather. Since this discovery, I've done everything I can to try and locate John Donovan (as mentioned earlier), thinking that perhaps he just wanted to be "claimed" before he could rest in peace.  While it's unfortunate that we will most likely never know the precise location of his burial, the St. Mary's Cemetery folks are working on pinpointing the Paupers Grave site for me and I hope to visit there someday soon to pay our family's respects.

After all, no matter his flaws, none of us Donovan's would be here if it weren't for him.