SeanPaulMurphyVille: My Family: The Public Suicide of Frank Kostohryz

Thursday, February 13, 2020

My Family: The Public Suicide of Frank Kostohryz

My 2nd great-granduncle Frank Kostohryz

A friend of mine has a complaint about genealogy.

She claims that single people get no love in genealogy. That genealogists only care about people who marry and have children. To prove her wrong, I am going to tell the story of one of my second great-granduncles, Frank Kostohryz, a single man who it seems also felt he never got the love he deserved.

I never heard of Uncle Frank until I began working on the family tree. One afternoon, I was going through an old family photo album with my grandmother Rita Rosenberger Protani Pollock and she pointed out a photo of him. Frank was the brother of her grandfather. She remembered him. She said he was good-natured and spoke English very well. He was a tailor. She said he made a great deal of money -- by our family standards -- making uniforms during World War I, but he also suffered from hard times. She said he had to live with the Little Sisters of the Poor for a while.

That's all I got about him -- just about two short sentences. And, since he never produced any descendants to track, I left it at that. But there was more to Frank. Much more.

Skip ahead about fifteen years. My genealogical research had to take a backseat to my work on Chapel Street -- a paranormal novel about a family, much like my own, plagued by a long series of suicides. When you have multiple suicides in your family, you tend to wonder if it was somehow genetic. My research on the family tree seemed to detect a strain of depression on my mother's maternal line. As a result, to add some realism to my book, I set the origins of my novel in the Baltimore of my Bohemian immigrant ancestors.

While I was writing the book, I found a 1907 story on newspapers.com about Uncle Frank in Baltimore's German language newspaper. Despite three years of high school German classes, I couldn't make out much. I do have my trusty German/English dictionary, but I didn't have time to translate it. I put it aside until I finished the first draft of my novel. Then, rather than translate it myself, I simply posted the newspaper story on Facebook and asked if any of my German-speaking friends could translate it for me. One of them did. The news shocked me -- and creeped me out.

The story said that Frank had gone to a nightclub at the harbor frequented by a former girlfriend and shot himself.

WTF? There I was writing about suicide in my Bohemian family only to find out that one of those very relatives shot himself....

Before we go any further, let me give you some background on poor Frank.

Frank Kostohryz was born in Bernartice, Bohemia, on 16 May 1876, the son of Jan Kostohryz, a master blacksmith, and his wife Anna Cunat, the daughter of a farmer. He was one of nine children. Four of those children died before the age of three. Frank himself was named after an older brother who had recently died at the age of two. Yikes. Not a promising start, if you ask me.

The Kostohryz house in Bernartice.

Frank came to Baltimore in 1889. He was not the first member of his family to arrive. Frank's older sister Mary Kostohryz arrived in Baltimore in 1883, where she met and married a man named Vaclav Klima. Frank was followed by his older brother, Jan Kostohryz, my 2nd great-grandfather. He and his wife Maria arrived in 1892.

Just as my grandmother Rita remembered, Frank worked as a tailor. He can be found in the 1900 Federal Census of Maryland living with his sister Mary and her family in a typical East Baltimore row house at 523 North Castle Street. What my grandmother didn't tell me was that Frank fell desperately in love with a woman sometime around 1897. Sadly, the love of his life ultimately rejected him and married another man, leading ten years later to the newspaper story I referenced above. Fortunately, more of the details were revealed in a couple of English-language stories.

Here's the first story from The Baltimore Sun, dated 27 June 1907:

SISTER FEARS SUICIDE

----------

Frank Kostohryz Wrote Her Of

Ending His Life.

Mrs. Mary Klima, 523 North Castle street, has asked the police to help locate her brother, Frank Kostohryz who, she fears, has committed suicide.
She received the following letter from him yesterday:
"Dear Sister: I can stand it no longer. I have been thinking of taking this step for the last 10 years. Don't blame me for what I intend to do. I bid you the last good-by. She is to blame more than I am.
"The Lord only knows how I suffered because of my love for her. I have never done anybody any harm and can't see why happiness is denied me.
"See my foreman, Mr. Link, at Schloss; two days' pay is coming to me.
"Lovingly, Frank."
Mrs. Klima said last night that her brother had loved and lost about 10 years ago. The girl who jilted him married another and is now living in East Baltimore. Since that time her brother, who is a tailor, has often referred to his bitter disappointment. Last Sunday he told her life was not worth living.

Here's a follow-up story from The Baltimore Sun, dated 28 June 1907, which also featured a photograph:

KOSTOHYRZ STILL MISSING

----------

Threatened To End Life Because

Girl Jilted Him.

Nothing has been seen or heard of Frank Kostohryz since Wednesday morning, when he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Mary Klima, 523 North Castle street, bidding her goodby and saying life was not worth living and intended to end it all. He told sister he was driven to take his life by sorrow over a sweetheart who jilted him 10 years ago and married another.
Kostohryz had boarded with Mr. J. Smelzel, 706 East Baltimore street, for two years.

The story finally played out in this article from Der Deutsche Correspondent, dated 3 July 1907:

I will not translate the story. Let's just cut to the chase: Frank did not die. He was taken to University Hospital where he was nursed back to health.

What happened to him afterwards? I don't know in any detail, but apparently the inner demons that drove him to that self-destructive act where satiated by the mere attempt. I don't know what kind of psychological or spiritual assistance he received, although I suspect a truly devoted sister was a key factor, but he did not kill himself. Although it seems he never found a new love and married, Uncle Frank lived another thirty-six years before dying of pneumonia on 17 November 1943. Here's the final newspaper story about him:

KOSTOHRYZ.--On November 17, 1943, FRANK, aged 66 years, beloved son of the late John and Anna Kostohryz.
Funeral from Frank Coach and Son Funeral Home, 900 North Chester street, Saturday morning at 9:15. Requiem High Mass at St. Wenceslaus' Church at 10 o'clock. Interment Holy Redeemer Cemetery.

My grandmother Rita was twenty-three-years-old when Uncle Frank finally died. Her Bohemian family was pretty close. She obviously knew about this story, but she decided to keep it secret from me ninety years after the event. That's perfectly understandable. There is a stigma attached to suicide which is not associated with any other form of death. No one wants to talk about suicide -- even the attempted variety. I doubt very much Frank would like this sad incident to define his life either. He would undoubtedly prefer my grandmother's brief biography -- that he was a good-natured guy, who did well financially and spoke English well. But I'm glad I found out about this incident.

In my family tree, Frank was a mere shadow. His essence as a human being was originally reduced to a few dates and two descriptive sentences. Now I, and posterity, have a much more rounded portrait of him. He was a man of great passion and sorrow. In many ways, we are kindred spirits.

More importantly, Frank is a great object lesson on suicide. It is not inevitable. One moment of madness does not condemn a person to that fate. Many people who attempt suicide and survive manage to put the impulse behind them. I hope Frank's story will provide hope to others wrestling with this issue.

Frank might have loved and lost, but he found a reason to keep on living.

Bravo.

Frank Kostohryz, in his later years.

Click here for more of my genealogical blogs:

My Family: Christmas 1967

My Family: My Granddaughter Emma Renee Schwalm

My Family: The Diaries of Mary Elizabeth McLane, Part 1
My Family: The Back River Tragedy

My Family: My Three Nuns
My Family: The Murder of Adam G. Robertson
My Family: Uncle Buzzy and The Boys In Company B
My Family: 1st Lieutenant Charles Edward Farber, KIA
My Family: Cousin Tillie's Balcony
My Family: The Public Suicide of Carl "Ernie" Stark
My Family: The Public Suicide of Frank Kostohryz
My Family: Mary Marshall Mirfin, Hero
My Family: Rita Cecilia Rosenberger Protani Pollock
My Family: Vincent Klima and the Spanish Influenza
My Family: A Festival of Fathers
My Family: The Honorable George Farber
My Family: A Celebration of Mothers
My Family: The Mystery of Frank John Murphy
My Family: Kristina Bednar Kostohryz
My Family: Great-Grandmom Assunta's Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer: