Cousin Hunting: Verne Carol Grooms Gilchrist (1935 - 1960)

Today I've been looking at the other children of my maternal third great grandfather William T. Slater (abt 1790-1847) which is what lead me to this fourth cousin* who was only 24 when she died on the 31st of January, 1960--and the cause of her death attracted my attention.

[South Carolina Department of Archives and History; Columbia, South Carolina; Year Range: 1950-1961;

Death County or Certificate Range: Charleston. Ancestry.com]

Next I looked for a newspaper description of the accident:

[The Charleston News and Courier, Tuesday, February 02, 1960 Charleston,

South Carolina Page 8. Newspapers.com]

From these two items we can deduce that Verne Carol was divorced and while her daughter seems to have remained with her, her two sons were described as "of Detroit, Mich."

It's too late in the day for me to go into the matter, but in 1965 her parents brought a wrongful death suit against the estate of the driver Charles Henry Zander, Jr. and there are several newspaper articles regarding that suit. Maybe I'll return to the topic in a later post.


*Here's how we're related:

[Ancestry.com]

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