0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the great literary mysteries in America. 0:07 [SPEAKER_00]: My view is that it will remain a tantalizing mystery. 0:11 [SPEAKER_00]: These were the words of Don Swing, author of the assassination of Ambrose Beers, a love story. 0:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And it is the perfect way to start today's episode. 0:29 [SPEAKER_00]: or come back friend to hometown history. 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, we will be exploring the case of Ambrose Beers, a renowned writer, who just vanished without a trace. 0:41 [SPEAKER_00]: His last letter hinted he was off to somewhere unknown. 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And after that, all that remained was complete silence. 0:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Born on June 24, 1842, in Ohio, and raised in Indiana, Bears was the 10th child among 13 siblings. 1:06 [SPEAKER_00]: For my young age, being surrounded by his father's extensive library, Bears developed a passion for reading and writing, which would later become apparent in his professional work. 1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: His childhood was marked by a strict and highly religious upbringing, and soon he grew to deeply resent us, shaping his critical view of religion that pretty much lasted throughout his life. 1:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He left his home at the age of 15 to work at a local newspaper, the Northern Indiana. 1:44 [SPEAKER_00]: At the age of 19, when the American war started, he joined the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry. 1:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He saw action in Western Virginia in 1861, was at the Battle of Philippine, the first organized land action of the war, and made headlines for rescuing a severely wounded comrade at the Battle of Rage Mountain during heavy fire, 2:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Bears also fought in the terrifying battle of Shiloh in April, 1862. 2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: An experience that he later wrote about in several short stories, and a memoir titled While I saw of Shiloh. 2:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Later in April, 1863, he was promoted to First Lieutenant, and served as a topographical 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Bears' work put him in contact with prominent generals, like George Thomas, and Oliver Howard, who supported his unsuccessful application to West Point in May 1864. 2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, in June of that year, he suffered a traumatic brain injury at the Battle of Canisol Mountain and took a summer leave. 3:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The gravity of his experiences, being directly involved in life-threatening situations, witnessing the chaos of war, and suffering a traumatic brain injury, exposed him to the harsh realities of human nature, and the brutal consequences of conflict. 3:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It was these experiences that instilled in him a sense of skepticism about the human condition and the workings of society. 3:38 [SPEAKER_00]: This was reflected in the dark themes in satirical tone of his writings, earning him the nickname bitter beers later in life. 3:52 [SPEAKER_00]: After the war in 1868, beer settled in San Francisco for many years, making a name for himself as a contributor and editor for several newspapers and magazines. 4:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Like the San Francisco News Letter, the Argonaut, Overland Monthly, the Californian, and the Wasp. 4:13 [SPEAKER_00]: His crime reporting for the San Francisco News Letter even made it into the library of America 4:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So despite the initial rocky start to his life, he was able to get back on his feet, the misclearly making strides. 4:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a couple of years, having worked in the U.S. and even England, his career as a rider was flourishing, both as a journalist and a fiction rider. 4:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But while he was making progress in his professional life, his personal life was taking 4:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The following years were marked by personal tragedies, the violent death of his eldest son, day, in 1889. 5:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The separation from his wife Molly, in 1891, and the death of his youngest son Lee, in 1901. 5:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Beers continued to face challenging times, and then in 1904 when his ex-wife passed away as well. 5:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Bears was left all alone in the world, but you wouldn't know his loss and isolation if you looked at his life from the outside. 5:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He continued his work in journalism and literature, contributing to several newspapers and periodicals. 5:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It was soon after this period that he compiled and published the Devil's Dictionary, which remains one of his best known works. 5:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It is basically a satirical dictionary, which turns regular words into comedy by giving them funny and sharp definitions. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: like love would be a temporary insanity, curable by marriage, or religion would be a daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable. 6:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You get the idea. 6:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Now Bears originally wrote these definitions and parts, over 30 years, for different magazines and newspapers. 6:17 [SPEAKER_00]: after being copied and imitated for a long time. 6:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He compiled them into books, first as the cynics world book and 1906, and later into a fuller form as the Devil's Dictionary in 1911. 6:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And when the books first came out, people had mixed feelings about them. 6:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But as time went on, the Devil's Dictionary became incredibly popular. 6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It has been quoted a lot, translated into many languages, and has inspired other writers, making it well known around the world. 6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: In the 1970s, it was even named, one of the 100 greatest masterpieces of American literature by the American Revolution by Centennial Administration, apparently people found it incredibly funny, and one columnist from the Wall Street Journal even called it probably the most brilliant work of satire, written in America, and maybe one of the greatest and all of world literature. 7:23 [SPEAKER_00]: As we can guess, his professional work was what drove him now. 7:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And then came his rather unique project. 7:31 [SPEAKER_00]: In the fall of 1913, at the age of 71, he decided to go on a tour of civil war battlefields across the US, which was supposed to end in New Orleans. 7:44 [SPEAKER_00]: From there, he headed to Mexico, drawn by the ongoing Mexican Revolution. 7:51 [SPEAKER_00]: though his exact intentions, whether to join the fight or just observe for the sake of writing, remained unclear. 7:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever his intentions were, things did not go according to plan. 8:04 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1913, Ambrose Beers has thought to have traveled south, aiming to meet up with Pancho via 8:14 [SPEAKER_00]: His final letter was sent from there, in December of that year, where he said, as to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination. 8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: What actually happened after that remains a mystery, because Bears simply vanished after this. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He was missing for almost a year, and neither his family nor his friends heard from him for months. 8:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until September of 1914, that the news made it to the Indianapolis papers. 8:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Hidden on page 24, the Indianapolis News on September 19, 1914, was the headline Indiana Author, last heard from the Mexico. 9:04 [SPEAKER_00]: By then, federal authorities had been involved in the search. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: They were in contact with a consular officer in Mexico. 9:12 [SPEAKER_00]: and the war department had even directed U.S. troops to look for him. 9:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But despite these efforts, there was no news, and there never would be. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Even though the search eventually faded, as with all mysteries, there was a number of theories that were being suggested long after the news had broken. 9:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Based on his last letter, the first theory was that he committed suicide. 9:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Evidently, the last decade of Bears' life was tough. 9:46 [SPEAKER_00]: There were his personal struggles, having lost both his sons as well as his ex-wife. 9:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Adding to that, Bears battled lifelong asthma in complications from a traumatic brain injury he had sustained during the war. 10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: After all these hardships, it's normal if you felt exhausted, 10:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Some think his trip to Mexico, under the guise of covering the war, was actually a cover-up for his real plan, to end his life on his own terms in the Grand Canyon, and his lotter was actually a vague hint towards the plan. 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Another theory was that he was executed by Pontio Vías Fireingsquad, 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: James Leinert, a retired American priest in Mexico, followed up on stories he heard from locals that Bears was executed by Pontiovias orders, Embarried in Sierra Mojada, Caluela. 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Leinert even installed a gravestone there, that reads, Here lies Ambrose when it's Bears, a famous American writer and journalist who was executed as 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: before entering Mexico, bears apparently wrote to his niece Laura, saying that being executed by a firing squad would be a preferable end to old age or disease. 11:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Some people also believe that he was killed by Mexican federal forces, an adventurer named Texo Riley claimed that Bears was killed in Sierra Mojada, by Mexican federal troops who thought he was a spy. 11:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Unable to speak Spanish, Bears couldn't convince them otherwise before they executed him. 11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: A Riley said he saw letters addressed to Bears, in the house where the writer had stayed, 11:41 [SPEAKER_00]: A rather uneventful theory is that he simply died of pneumonia in Texas. 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Chris Opfer's 2019 article mentions that beers possibly going by the name Embrosia could be buried in an unmarked grave in Marfa, Texas. 12:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Journalist Jake Silverstein explored this theory, finding a letter claiming that a hitchhiker who had fought with the Mexican federal forces described picking up an L old man named Embrosia. 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: who talked about his writings and died of pneumonia during their journey back to the US. 12:21 [SPEAKER_00]: As we all know, there is nothing solid about any of these theories, leaving tons of room for speculation. 12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But there is one theory that he didn't die during this trip. 12:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Since his remains were never recovered, it is possible that Bears went into hiding somewhere, like in a cave in the Sonoran Desert, and he eventually died there. 12:50 [SPEAKER_00]: that wraps up today's episode. 12:53 [SPEAKER_00]: As Wayne had said, this case remains to be a mystery, even after a century has passed, and the question remains, was it a planned escape from a life he grew tired of, or was there something more sinister at play? 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to Hometown History, be sure to follow along for more interesting stories from the past,
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