Big C, little c

This a difficult story to share.

I admit I was horrified when I first discovered the Ku Klux Klan had a presence in Ohio. It wasn't a huge presence, but it was there. I knew this because I had long been told the story of my future grandmother, Alice Thelma Hamilton, and her sister, my great-aunt, briefly attending a rally at the local Hocking County fairgrounds out of "curiosity."

At that time and in that area the KKK mostly focused on (or against) Jews and Roman Catholics. 

It took me awhile but I finally found at least some confirmation in the Wednesday, Aug. 29, 1923 edition of the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum. My grandmother was 16 and her sister 13 at that time!

As they approached the spectacle they were approached by a hooded figure who said, "Girls, I think you need to go home." It was their father, my great-grandfather. They knew it by his voice and his shoes, and he was apparently there with his three brothers-in-law.

But I was startled when I found this paragraph in the Saturday, Feb. 7, 1925 edition of the Zanesville, Ohio Times Signal  in a not too widely distributed wire story about the poisonings and its investigation:

    It was revealed today that still another angle had been pursued by Prosecutor Chester in his questioning of students when it was learned that some of those examined had been asked whether they were members of the Ku Klux Klan. All but one of the young men affected by the poison capsules were Catholics and he was a Jew.

Now either this was either a mistake, because I know Charley was not a Roman Catholic, or the writer meant catholic with a little "c."

Most protestant churches use the term catholic, with a lower-case "c," to refer to the belief that all Christians are part of one Church. Because of that we have the phrase "one holy catholic and apostolic Church" in the Nicene Creed, and the phrase "holy catholic church" in the Apostles' Creed.

I sincerely doubt the KKK was behind the poisonings, but it's a horrifying thought.

Oh, five years after the rally and three years after the poisonings, grandpa Fred married my grandmother Alice Thelma Hamilton.

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