General Notes

Notes for JOHN KEAHEY: from Larry D. Keahey
The writings of Rev. Wm. Angus McLeod contain the following: " John Keahey committed suicide when his daughter, Margaret, was about eight years old. I have heard her tell a few things about that tragic event, but it was not one she often discussed. On a few occasions I went with her to the old Patterson graveyard, a lonely spot between Buffalo Creek and its tributary, Gin Branch, just across the latter stream from our home. Margaret spoke of her father, John Keahey, as a man of good repute, from a family of prominent people. No one ever knew why he killed himself. One tradition is that in his youth he and a friend were " bled " by an old doctor as the fashion was in those days, and the blood of the two was caught in the same basin, thus becoming mixed. A prevailing superstition was that in cases like that, where bloods mixed, whatever caused the death of one would cause the death of the other. John's friend committed suicide, and when John heard of it, the superstition began to prey on his mind in a terrible fashion until he, too, took his own life. All this, of course, is only tradition.
John Keahey was something of a mechanic, and had a workshop where he did his work. One morning, shortly before his death, his son, William, then thirteen years old, was sent to the shop to call his father to breakfast. The lad was horror-stricken to find his father lying on the ground, over a little trench he had dug in the floor, with a huge knife in his hand ready to cut his throat. The arrival of his son seemed to break the spell. Startled and embarrassed, he jumped to his feet, put away the knife and charged his son never to mention to anyone what he had just seen " and let this be the last thing YOU will ever think of doing! ". The son was too horrified to think of telling what he had seen, until after his father's death. Mrs. Daniel Patterson was there taking care of Elizabeth who was near death from tuberculosis, and keeping house for the family. Soon after this, John Keahey rushed into the house and grabbed his gun from the rack, as he often did when a hawk was threatening the chickens. A few minutes later he laid dead behind the smokehouse. Elizabeth died not long after.