I went to Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to find the grave of my great great grandmother and instead found a stone that lead me to the story of a murder. And a potential tie between my Greers and members of the Peerage.

I was looking for the grave of my great great grandmother named Ruth Greer. I knew her son (actually a stepson, William Greer) was buried in Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and so I looked there. They have an online database of burials which makes it easy to check.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a Ruth Greer buried there (section 4, lot 21072) about the time we thought our Ruth may have died. So that was the easy part. The hard stuff would be actually finding the grave, reading the stone if it existed and was still readable, maybe finding out more, and then making an educated guess. To make a long story short, I did not find the stone but the information obtained from the Green-wood genealogist leads me to believe that the Ruth Greer buried there is probably not our Ruth.

Although we never found Ruth’s grave we did find another Greer in the lot. (Public Lots can have hundreds of burials so this does not suggest a relationship. But then I didn’t know that at the time so at least for that day I thought there might be a tie with our family.)

The stone was worn and flat on ground with just the front surface visible in grass. Stone near-by looked fallen over so I assume same happened to this one.

I read: Charlie E Greer (unclear writing above name); Youngest son of T. F. Greer, Esq ; born Rhone Hill Moy, Ireland (Rh was worn); [unclear word] July 30, 1887; aged 21 years; inscription – “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation.”

Later found a couple NY Times articles about this death being a murder and it then seemed obvious that what I called an unclear word was “assassinated”.

• Murder and Suicide in Broadwy Hotel
• Why Greer was Killed

And this from ThePeerage.com:

“Charles Edward Greer was born on 16 May 1866.1 He was the son of Thomas Fergus Greer and Elizabeth Sarah Carter.2 He died on 30 July 1887 at age 21, at New York, USA, unmarried.”

So this turned out to be just an interesting aside. There is nothing in these stories or what I know to tie these Greers with mine. It is probably just a coincidence that a Ruth Greer (who I later learned is probably not the Ruth Greer I was looking for) was buried in the same Lot in Green-wood and same year. The times articles are a rather interesting bit of history featuring a wayward noble’s son who worked as a night porter in an NYC hotel, a love triangle (but the story is somewhat vague on this), jealousy, and a murder–suicide.

Note added in 2015: It did turn out the grave I was looking for was my Ruth. But it was 3 years before I figured that one out. I still know nothing that would indicate a connection with Charlie Greer.