I take it Albert Valentine (mentioned in one of the newspaper clippings shown) woulda been your grandfather, then? I bet it's kinda interesting to see a family member who's probably been dead for years mentioned on the internet.

This is super interesting, thanks so much or sharing!

Woah that’s so neat!

May I ask why you did end up selling the house though?

@@ShadowOfDeadRhodes21 140 year old houses have too many problems

Xin Zhui is her name.

They had testers! So I doubt the kitchen staff was blamed. They were amazingly advanced in healthcare and medicine, and I’m sure they knew what heart attacks were.

@@-MaryPoppins-maybe

Arsenic is a preservative

she doesnt look obese

Dwight Cemetery in Belchertown, about 10 miles south of Pelham. It just has her name on it (Mary Gibbs), and the dates of her birth and death (14 May 1827 - 24 Jan 1902), no further inscription.

I think this is a brilliant idea. And "Walter was a dick."

@@penthesilia Perfect. Walter was a dick, wasn't he.

​@@penthesilia More like William was, as Wm. Gibbs put the poem and accusation up publicly on that headstone.

@@KabobHope Walter was the guy who died. The dick was his brother, William. I wonder what his tombstone has to say.

Interesting, never knew! Thanks

Exactly what I thought (as someone with gallbladder issues and keeps apple cider vinegar on hand at all times).

But it’s easier to blame the wife duh

@@LampebruderOnly one person seems to have blamed the wife. Too bad the "only one person" also was the engraver.

Considering that gallstone disease mainly occurs in women (the effect of estrogen on the smooth muscle of the bile ducts and on the properties of bile), your statement that a 36-year-old man has cholelithiasis is absurdly ludicrous!!🙄🙄

It binds to proteins, and I'd expect that until the body decomposed, it could be found in the liver. There probably wouldn't have been time for much to get "locked" into the hair. But by now, I'd expect that the tissue would be completely decomposed. I don't know how much would have made it into the bones. At any rate, I'd expect that modern analytical techniques would be able to determine the arsenic levels in the soil, and could be compared with the "background" level naturally present elsewhere in the graveyard. What I'm not sure about is how mobile arsenic is in soil, with rain and groundwater passing through.

Much depends on the water flow, for sure -but I know they can measure 'plumes' of arsenic from old orchards after more than a century. In reality, it is unlikely an investigation will be done now. @@jpolowin0

Given the history of the headstone being replaced, it might be prudent to check whether it's even in the correct spot.

@@JH-wd6dpit may also be prudent to check that mr. Warren is *there.*

@@firstcanonkill1767ummmm that’s what he said what tf 😂

I mean honestly, he was already ill in his belly. He needed gruel or pap or other invalid food. I’m thinking she didn’t do it. He was sick already and whatever that was likely killed him. The Gibbs brother was just carrying on with stirring trouble.

​@NilZed1 knowing women how dare you say she didn't...she probably worked hard to earn that poem!

​​@@NilZed1 shes the one that fed him the bad oysters knowing they werent fresh. She could have fed him any of those other things. Where did she get oysters? Where was she when he was sick? A neighbor had to give him something to drink. Where was she? Seems like she poisoned him, left him to die and when she came back found that he had somehow survived after days alone. So then she whips out aome bad oysters and gives them to a ravenous man who hasnt eaten in days? Still think she is innocent? Oh, and then she marries his brother....a younger brother who otherwise wouldnt have inherited. Now, as her husband, he gets the house, the wife and the land he was not going to get before. Yeah...he was murdered. Oh, btw, arsenic poisoning makes you insanely thirsty and burns your stomach as described. The cider probably counter-acted the stomach acid. Vinegar is a treatment for acid reflux.

@@smokejaguarsix7757 You and i are thinking the same scenario.😀 I had alarm bells ringing all over my head when i heard about the younger brother who married her after this brother died. "Qui prod est"? ("who benefits"? in Latin, the first question any investigator asks in case of suspicious death or murder). In this case, the answer would be his wife and the younger brother. I would go as far as to say that his younger brother could have killed him with the arsenic, not Mary. Mary took part in the scheme by serving the potentialy "dangerous" oysters, that were just a front to muddle the matters more(yes, oysters can cause food poisoing and potential death in those days, therefore they had to be blamed). And yes, arsenic poisoning causes masive thrist and fever, which means he had already been slowly and gradually poisoned for an indefinite period of time before his death. The oysters, when foul, have a horrible distinct smell, so he wouldn't have eaten them if they had been foul. Again, they had to be served and then blamed, to cover the murder and the prior poisoning. Arsenic could have been found in the house, i think it was an active ingredient in substances against rats.

@@smokejaguarsix7757 I have another scenario in mind: Warren had already eaten the bad oysters before and that was what got him sick in the first place. Arsenic complications due to prolonged exposure are really characteristic and would have been easily spotted, while acute arsenic poisoning would have killed him much quicker. Arsenic also isn't known to cause fever. However, every symptom does match food poisoning. Not only that, we have to consider that it happened in a town far away from the shore in the 19th century: there was no easily accessible information about proper preparation of oysters. From this point of view, it seems likely that the oyster were already spoiled or that Mary did not know how to prepare them properly in the first place. But why would she serve oysters then? It was the 19th century, so the likely scenario is that Warren requested the oysters, and Mary just complied. Also, vinegar is acidic, which makes it less effective than a glass of milk as treatment for acid reflux. Some people say it helps, some people say it makes it worse. However, it was weird William never forgave her for marrying his brother, as it was Warren who chose her as his bride. Unless William wanted to marry her. If all three brothers where infatuated with Mary, suddenly it all makes sense: William hated Mary for not marrying him, Warren suspected poisoning both beacause his mind was foggy due to the sickness and knowing the other brothers also wanted her, leading to jealousy and paranoia and the third brother marrying her after Warren died. Of course, this is all just conjecture and the scenario that makes the most sense in my mind. We have few testimonies and zero evidence to actually know what happened.

Where is this?

When people go that far to state what they know to be true- it's true. A town can all slander one person- doesn't make it true.

Ooooh, I'm from Staffordshire (Rugeley), I may have to go and take a look!

@@Davey-Boyd - Just had a look this morning, it’s a bit hard to read now but it says- “It was C---s B---w “That brought me to my end. “Dear parents, mourn not for me “For God will be my friend. “With half a pint of poyson “He came to visit me. “Write this on my grave “That all that read it may see." Her name was Sarah Smith and she was buried in 1763.

@@bjorntoulouse7523 Wow thanks! Poor girl and her baby.

@@bjorntoulouse7523 Very interesting. I just googled it. I was expecting the "C----s B---w" thing to be the result of erosion or vandalism, but that is exactly the format in which it appears on the stone. Looks to me as if that was the only way permission could be granted to have the stone erected, since directly naming the guy would cause a lot of trouble. I did a bit of further digging and it turns out a local historian filled in the blanks, saying the accused was a wealthy local farmer named Charles Barlow.

@@elennapointer701 - Yeah, disgusting that he was never held accountable.

Didn’t know Jacksfilms shouted him out, I found out about him through Tom Scott’s newsletter.

Oh sweet two KZfaqrs shouted him out

Never heard of Jacksfilms so, no they didn't tell the whole world about him.

the youtube algo is also at work! I found this independent of Tom Scott or Jacksfilms

oh, thats cool. I found this video just through recomendations

He died in March... that's a month with an 'r' in it. Supposedly, you should never eat oysters in months with an 'r' in their name. which would mean the only months they are safe to consume would be may, June, July and August.

@@sylvisterling8782 so just summer

​@@sylvisterling8782 Superstition is dumb...

⁠@@theimperfectgod7140I don't think it's superstition, it's just a general rule of thumb to only probably eat oysters in summer and conveniently, those months don't have 'r's in their name. Unless you're from the southern hemisphere lol, then it would be November, December, January and February.

She def did it.

We have one in the Allegheny cemetery in Pittsburgh that has the jaws movie poster shark as the headstone 😂🖤

Chad misanthrope

branding yourself for all eternity with some trite ass pop culture reference is the cringiest thing I’ve ever heard

⁠​⁠​⁠@@cashnelson2306i don't think the dead care much about what's considered cringe nowadays

🧤

I love that

There was the same or similar inscription on a gravestone in Wirksworth, Derbyshire. I think it went "As I am now, you too (or soon?) shall be..." I can't remember more.

@@Enoo-Wynn Amazing the one I know about is in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery in the southwest part Oklahoma City, in Oklahoma USA, dates to the middle 1800's Yours is in England, is that correct? What date, do you remember?

@@kevinpurcell7452 I don't remember, but I would guess the 1800s. The church is 5-700 years old (ie different bits), but I doubt older grave stones would be legible. (And possibly were removed. Some were actually in the path and I always used to jump over them due to fear of a skeletal hand reaching up!) Edit: I forgot to say, yes, it's in England. It's called St.Mary's.

@@Enoo-Wynn Ha. It was fun being young. Good health to you in this new year.

"Ripe, out-of-season, nasty ones... Mmmm-mmmm, delicious." He died in March and it's common knowledge you shouldn't eat Oysters out if season (Summer - June, July, August).

Was it common back then?@@thecommissaruk

@@AbstractTraitorHero It was known in the 18th and 19th c in Britain as Oysters were a popular cheap workers food in the summer. In the US? Perhaps not. Evidently someone was selling those out of season oysters in order for them to get to a town 80 miles from the coast in March, so presumably it wasn't widely known in that area at that time. Or, more likely, the consumer's didn't know and the sellers didn't *care*. (Bald eagle screech)

Actually it was super common. People back then ate so many oysters they made them nearly extinct on the east coast and destroyed the market. Everyone ate them all the time

@@mellie4174 Exactly despite the risk it was a poor man's food along with any other shellfish, I think the risk was why it was poor man's food but hey people in poverty gotta eat.

"Murdered by human wolves" that's metal as hell!

@@cupidwxings It's a Biblical description. The Bible has a term, "wolves in sheep's clothing." In other words, it means "people who appear innocent but are not, and who consume terribly at others' expense." An example of that would be the pedo _Jimmy Saville._

I always want to do that too

You should. After finding some ancestors burials learned majority of their stones are now illegible, toppled, broken, or missing. Then we found a reprint of transcriptions that one local wrote over 170yrs ago, listing the text on each stone, where they were, descriptions & condition. If stones weren't legible they recorded fragments of words, so the souls laid there could be remembered. A copy of their work was gifted to the Parish which survived, it's now the most complete preserved record of inscriptions for this old (long closed) church and its graveyard.

That sounds like an interesting idea. There’s a little graveyard near my home. It’s old, so old that some gravestones have been lost to time and are little more than stone nubs sticking out of the ground. I’m fascinated with that place, went there one night with my partners to look around. It was peaceful, but we left since one of them got a little spooked. Maybe once the weather warms up I’ll go back there and do that for the hell of it.

@J.IsOkay you definitely should! My mum took some crayon rubbings of old old family headstones in our local graveyard. She’s so glad she did, the headstones are completely weathered away now. Luckily nowadays we can just take photos with our phones!😊

There's a website called find a grave that does exactly that. My dad used to be pretty active there.

"Carving a stone while being chased!" 😂 he was a very capable fellow! 😂

He was a Mason, I don’t doubt it.

Shades of Alonzo Typer!

​@@cjthebeeskneesMason discovered the stone not carved it. Well. I mean allegedly anyway

Or not

the rumors behind the circumstances...* otherwise you're implying he's still alive or something

​@@citrus_sweet It's a reference to Mark Twain

Thanks for leaving such a nice comment! Means a lot!

Olde England is better though

@@myview5840 In what way?

I know what would've helped: a nice oyster soup

oysters are still somewhat pricey probably even more back then, and she or even he didn't what them to go to waste if they were bought before he got sick the extra day or two could have been what set the oysters off

​@@HappyBeezerStudios😂😂😂💀💀💀⚰️

Because, he wanted and asked for oysters! I think she was trying to make him happy, as a wife usually does. Especially, knowing they had five children!

Maybe he demanded it and she did what she was told or else. It's not unheard of that men were and are abusive to their wives.

I was wondering how long they had been married, since he was in his 80’s when he died. How old was she? If I was going to do my husband in, I wouldn’t wait until he was that old!

​@@susanleggieri2342 he was 36

@@inspector5122 oops! I read it as 86. Lol

She married his brother. That's a huge red flag.

​@@slthjawa5062 It was actually very common in those days. Have to take the time period and setting into account before casting moral judgement on someone's character.

I almost died of it in basic training. Had to be hospitalized, given morphine and saline, because I had vomited up basically all of the water in my body until I couldn't move a muscle under my own will. That was a fun evening.

@isaacjones7809 omg this happened to me too ^-^ The weird thing is that my mother and I ate the exact same food (except she ate even more than I did) that day but only I became afflicted and had to be hospitalized.

My Father, as far back as I'm aware, always has been very *strong* against old food that has gone off (or the "in doubt" possibility of it having gone off.) I don't blame him, it's a wonderful practice. Though sometimes it also makes conversations that we only just put something in the fridge a few days ago.

I was saying the same thing if you look hard enough i bet you would find a piece of headstone some where in the cemetery

Probably his favorite food or something like that. I know I have given myself trouble by eating something I enjoy too soon when sick with a stomach bug.

Most likely!

No women are evil and will kill men when possible since they don't get the same punishment as men

Hopefuly they don't ruin your tomestomb next

Lol, dont worry, they wont. My father is a Gibbs where as i have my mothers last name, though both sides are pretty stubborn.

what is the possibility of meeting your family history in a single youtube video?@@SylveonSlays

Its very likely, the Gibbs have extensive history. You'll probably never come across my moms side since we actually have a german last name@@tommarnt

imagine the history goes deep into the hadean era@@SylveonSlays

Sound similar to the Hatfield - McCoy Feud

would it also help with wife-poisoning? I bet it would. seems it did.

nuh uh that'd be communism >:( we can't actually do anything withcommunity just 15 minutes once a year then let the gov do the rest and act like we are actually mad at the government or we'd be ebil

Annual town meetings are still a common form of governance in New England.

When my mom was around she'd take me to cemeteries with crayons and paper to trace over gravestones and make fun of people's names

As an American, I've been trying to impress this on Americans. Less than 250 years of actually being a country. We're a baby country.

@@athenathegreatandpowerful6365 It could be said that your history starts in 1585 with the founding of the Roanoak Colony which is 438 years ago. Or, with a more conservatory view, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Those were the very first pioneers , to be followed a generation later by the Pilgrims. There was considerable contact between the old word and the new, and many of us in Europe have pre-revolutionary American roots. Many have Native American genes too. I've taken part in archeological digs in both the USA and UK and there is a big difference between how they begin. In the UK we often use a backhoe to get down to the layers we are interested in, but in the USA it's hand told from the grass down. I think that is in part because the sites in the US are far fewer and so more valuable for research. The USA and UK share much more than many people realise. Many of the political and social views behind the Declaration of Independence were as much British as American. The best example of this is Thomas Paine, the English author of Common Sense on which much of the D o I is based. I specially like Thomas Paine, not least because he was both a teacher and a Customs Officer in Lewes, Sussex, England - as was I. Many people in Britain held similar views but were suppressed. The Americans really did it, and good for them.

@@athenathegreatandpowerful6365 That's as skewed a view as counting the age of the United Kingdom as very old because you include the years it wasn't a nation yet. The US is young politically but not historically. Now Canada, that's our half sib who hasn't managed to get out of our parents' basement to set up living on its own. :)

if you can count Roman history in your country as your own then he can count Native American history as his, which goes back even further IoI

@@Jeremy_the_unfallible_n-a If you think that way, our species inhabited these UK Islands tens of thousands of years before our ancestors got to the Bearing Straight/Americas. And before Homo Sapiens these UK Islands had Neanderthals and before them Homo Erectus. Roman history is practically modern history to our Islands.

Aye, fresh fish doesn't smell fishy

Why though? Seems a very odd plan, if it even was a plan. “I’m going to order a whole bunch of oysters, keep them until they just slightly go off so that I can notice but my husband can’t, and coincidentally my husband will get sick at just the right time and then be very hungry so that he eats them all without expecting to share the meal with me…” And if it was spur of the moment, what was it? “you know what, I’m tired of listening to how much his stomach bothers him. Hungry is he? What do I have in the pantry that just happens to have spoiled and will kill him.”

Came to say the same thing.

@@bookcat123 you notice when raw, depending how they are cooked you'd never know. Hence people that get sick from seafood present day at restaurants. She just may not have realized they were bad.

​@@bookcat123For a possible motive, she did marry her husbands brother. Falling in love with the brother and wanting out of the marriage could easily be a motive for murder.

OR you can say they were poor and just weren't able to afford proper food and weren't educated enough to how to properly handle food.

@@lunova6165 I wrote for effect, so yes. You can say this in a way that doesn't impugne the wife

Actually there is more arsenic in pure apple juice than there is in any cider and you would have to drink a heck of a lot for it to be toxic. Also its parts per billion not million.

Actually that amount is so low it is totally harmless. There is zero debate...

@@littleannie390 when he mentioned vinegar, i wonder could it be the acid provided some temporary relief in case of As poisoning? i am not a doctor, i would like to hear from a toxicologist about that.

Most of the cemeteries in Western Massachusetts are like that, I am from that region and besides the major cities like Springfield, most towns have at the most 1,500 residents

Quabbin Reservoir is just east of Pelham, MA. when it was made, in the 1930s, it cut travel through town drastically, as east-west traffic now has to go to the north on Route 2 or to the south on Route 9 or even I-90. given the landform, though, it was probably always a bit of a backwoods.

I’m having a little trouble with your phraseology:”……..dig through……juicy bits…”. Just saying 😬

You can stop repeating it now.

Murdering someone with bad oysters is a terrible plan, because most people don't die from food poisoning - even back then. I've had food poisoning 6 times, never had medical treatment for it and was just sick and on the toilet a lot for a few days and then recovered on my own. Obviously food poisoning CAN kill you if you get it, but it's not likely and I doubt anybody would try and murder someone like that because they would understand the person is likely to recover. And I don't see why people would think she should have known the oysters were bad. Her husband ate the oysters and didn't see, smell or taste anything wrong with them - how is someone merely preparing and serving them supposed to know? Can you judge if food has gone bad if it doesn't look, smell or taste funny? I know I certainly can't.

Sounds like Byron Carter in 1908. He was a friend of the founder of Cadillac (Leland,) and electric starters weren't on cars. He tried helping a lady start her car that Winter, the car backfired, the crank starter hit him in the jaw. He then died in the hospital. That's why Leland implemented electric starters on Cadillacs.

Where? One can't expect uniformity in Depression era county poorhouses.

eighty miles to New Haven, CT. probably would have done it by train, but it's still a long trip from Northampton (5 hour walk one way) or Amherst (2 hours) to Pelham. so, given the changeability of March weather, likelihood of freshness could have varied considerably day to day, and much would also depend on how well they were stored from ocean bed to store to plate before being eaten.

It was with De Valera but that's in Ireland. In the US, who knows? Look what people do with Sean. :)

I should mention that some people theorize that it's gas deposits being released, some people obviously think aliens, or government stuff it's really interesting

She hated oysters?

You are correct! Good eye

Good questions! Mary died of a sinus infection at the age of 74. Her grave is in the nearby town of Belchertown. I wasn't able to find out what happened to her second husband, but I haven't really looked too hard into that either. Maybe something to research further one day!