In my reading about collateral relatives I’ve been filling in information on the John Greer and Julia Mary Hopkins family of New York City, I found some interesting stuff on Charles John Greer, a son born around 1900.

The first hit that this might be interesting was his World War 1 draft registration which listed his birthday and middle name neither of which I knew. Pretty sure it was him since the address matched the Greer family and it gave his nearest relative as Julius Greer of that address. Of course, they meant his mother Julia. The curious thing was that it listed NY state reformatory in Elmira NY as his employer. It would have been a long commute if he worked there but maybe he temporarily lived here when on duty and NYC was a permanent address. On the other hand, he could have been a prisoner there and his permanent address was used.

So either case, maybe there was a newspaper article about it. So I looked at my favorite site for free online newspaper articles. And what I found amazed me.

I don’t have time this morning but I’ll have to write about his exploits including a murder and an escape from Sing Sing prison. And of course why he was called Charles “Chink” Greer.