By Jessica Gorman
I’m always fascinated by the unexpected connections that I find, that reinforce the fact that we do live in such a small world, that lives and stories are more interconnected than we realize.
Anton Tscharner DeGraffenreid was my husband’s 7th great-grandfather. He lived in Virginia in the 1700s. Ermine Martha DeGraffenreid was his great-granddaughter. She was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1846 and was married to Will Lewis.
The Lewis family came to Minden in the 1840s from Columbus when Will was still a small child. At least two younger siblings were born here, Mary and Robert. Those familiar with our local history may recognize Robert for his part in the infamous Lewis-Pratt duel that took place at Overton. In 1869, Robert Lewis challenged Clarence Pratt to a duel to defend his family’s honor. Robert’s father, John Langdon Lewis, had served as parish judge for Claiborne Parish until details of his life in Georgia were revealed by Pratt. John Lewis was removed from the bench. In the course of the duel, Clarence Pratt was shot and died of his injuries several months later. His tragic death is another marked by a headstone in the Minden Cemetery.
John Langdon Lewis died two years later. It is said that Robert had gone “out West.” Will and his mother, Martha, moved to Red River Parish where they lived on the Bonnie Doon Plantation. On 14 May 1873, Will was married to Ermine DeGraffenreid and brought his new bride from Georgia to his family home. They had been married eight years when Will Lewis died in 1881. At some point before 1880, Robert Lewis returned to Louisiana and was living in his brother’s household. Upon Will’s death, Robert took charge of the plantation.
It is unclear, but seems that Ermine’s sister, Jane, may have also been living in the Lewis household. Jane lived in Galveston until the death of her husband, Judge Leslie Atchison Thompson, in 1874. It is said that, at that time, she moved to Louisiana. Whatever the case, Jane was at the Bonnie Doon plantation in December 1881. Both now widowed, the sisters made plans to return to Georgia.
There are conflicting reports as to exactly what happened or why, but on New Year’s Eve, Robert Lewis went into the bedroom of his sister-in-law, Ermine. He shot her in the chest. Hearing the gunshot, Jane rushed to her sister’s room where the gun was turned on her and she was wounded in the side of the neck. Some reports say that Robert was in love with Ermine, that he didn’t want her to leave, and had tried to convince her stay. Another claimed that couldn’t be further from the truth and expressed outrage that Robert Lewis’s character be called into question in such a way. One thing that does seem to be consistent among the different accounts is that alcohol was involved. Someone, identified as a friend of Robert Lewis, believed that he was in an alcohol and morphine-induced state of insanity.
After shooting both sisters, Robert Lewis turned the gun on himself and ended his own life with a shot to the head. The sisters’ injuries were not immediately fatal. They left the plantation and made their way to the Hotel Dieu in New Orleans. It was there that Ermine Martha DeGraffenried Lewis died of injuries two months later. Her body was returned to Georgia for burial. Jane Thompson recovered from her injuries and went to live with a sister in Alabama and died a year later.
Robert’s mother, Martha, was said to have suffered from what was described as insanity following the tragic event. She returned to Georgia and died in Atlanta in 1884. There is a shared marker in the Minden Cemetery for John Langdon Lewis, and both sons, Will and Robert.
(Jessica Gorman is Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, and an avid genealogist.)