Into the Air

It was an American Eagle that one of Burley Chaney's friends had recently purchased, and the two men had decided, one Sunday afternoon, to take it up for a spin. The "field" they had used for takeoff was literally that: a field on a farm just outside the city of Zanesville, Ohio, where Chaney had recently secured work following his return from a disastrous stint in California.

The plane was said by witnesses to have "made a good takeoff," following which spectators had watched as it "soared gracefully into the air." The pilot—whether Chaney or his friend is not clear—circled his craft to the north and the east for quite some distance, eventually returning to approach the field for a landing.

Before that could happen, though, the plane was observed to have dipped at an unusual angle, but it quickly righted itself. Following that, the sound of the motor was heard to have "turned on full speed," but the plane dipped again. Going into a nosedive, the craft crashed into a ravine at the edge of the field.

Chaney and his companion—Chaney was seated in the forward seat—were both badly injured, and rushed by car to a local hospital. The Zanesville newspaper, The Times Recorder, reporting the next day, provided details of the injuries sustained by each of the two men and noted that Chaney died while in transit to the hospital. His companion, having never regained consciousness, survived only a few hours more.

Chaney was said to have taken the plane up several times before this episode, and had never before experienced trouble with the machine. This time, however—at least, according to the newspaper—"hundreds of persons" were drawn to the scene of the crash. What was billed as a "spectacular nose dive" was said to have been the area's first air tragedy.

According to the March 17, 1930, report, Chaney was described as "a good flyer." Though a follow up report was filed in the next day's edition—including paragraphs bringing up Chaney's unfortunate past in California—no mention was ever made as to the suspected cause of the crash.

Just as had happened barely three years prior for his fellow aviator friend from Ohio, at age thirty three, the last chapter had abruptly closed on a man for whom other burdens had eclipsed his underlying love for flying.

The Lure of Those Flying Machines

It may have seemed the logical move for the Chaney family to return home to Ohio after all they had been through in California. Not only was the shooting at the Gardena airfield a shock, but the resultant arrest, trial and conviction for violation of immigration laws must have made it hard on the family to find work—perhaps even maintain social ties.

After the family's return to the Chaneys' Coshocton, Ohio, hometown, it wasn't long until further devastating events caught up with them. There's a reason why, by the time of the 1930 census, we can only find Burley Chaney's wife and four children enumerated in Coshocton. Though all six of the family had arrived in Ohio recently, by the time of the census that year, Burley was no longer with them.

In fact, it was shortly after he had finally secured work for himself that the change had occurred. Burley had extended his job-hunting efforts, since Coshocton was such a rural area, to the nearby city of Zanesville—the very town where he and the two Perry County boys, the Daugherty brothers, had, five years earlier, met to head west to California.

It was a snap, considering his recent history, that he would no longer be able to seek work with his former employer, the Coshocton police department, where he had once been the town's first traffic officer. Perhaps it was that same personal history that had made it necessary for the family to leave California in the first place. Falling back on his previous occupation, Burley once again found work as an auto mechanic at a garage in Zanesville, only a month or so before the 1930 census.

The lure of those flying machines still had a grip on Chaney, though, and he found ways to connect with others who were as fascinated with them as he was. Whether Burley Chaney was as knowledgeable about the craft as he gave the impression of being, I'm not sure. Still, whether a lack of experience or the bad luck of a mechanical malfunction, it was a surprise to see the headlines in the Zanesville Times Recorder on March 17, 1930, and realize one of the names below was that of Burley Chaney.

 

A Fresh Start

What can one do for a livelihood, after having been released from Federal Prison? Burley R. Chaney, now having the onus of adding a year's sentence for violation of federal immigration laws to his record, still had a wife and four children under the age of ten to support. Perhaps things did not go so well for the Chaney family after Burley's release from McNeil Penitentiary on June 10, 1928.

There is no way to determine just how he tried, between that out date in 1928 and the next U.S. Census in 1930, to make a go of remaining at his southern California home. What we do know, though, is that he and his family eventually did return to the same area from which his whole west coast adventure began: Zanesville, Ohio.

Before he had left his hometown in Ohio—a rural area known as Coshocton—he had been listed in the preceding census with his wife and infant daughter, all living with Burley's parents. By the time of the 1930 census, the family was situated with his wife's parents in that same area.

Shortly after the beginning of that year, Burley had been able to obtain work at a garage, serving as a mechanic—the very skill which had led to his meeting Marion Daugherty and, eventually, Marion's older brother Arthur, the now-deceased student pilot who had been training at Chaney's air field in California before his unexpected death.

By 1930, with trial, conviction and sentence behind him, Burley Chaney was back home with his family, and back to work at the relatively tame occupation of auto mechanic.

But what do you tell others about those missing years in a life's story? Apparently, the understanding around town about Chaney's return was that in California, he had been "flying in the government airmail service" and that the reason for his return to Ohio—and a more mundane line of work—was that "a slight accident resulted in injury."

That, at least, was what had been reported on the front page of The Times Recorder in Zanesville, Ohio, on a cloudy Monday, March 17, 1930—barely one month after his return to work in that city. 

Paying One's Debt to Society

Newspapers have a way of playing up the action big, when uncertainty looms and there is still a threat present. When a crisis comes to its concluding act, however, the report may be buried in the fine print, several pages in—if even mentioned at all.

It was only thanks to the records of the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington—digitized by the National Archives and Records Administration and included in the collection at Ancestry.com—that I learned what had become of Arthur J. Daugherty's friend and flight instructor following the Ohio man's death near Los Angeles in 1927.

Apparently, Burley Russell Chaney—listed simply by his initials as B.R. Chaney in the federal record—had been sentenced to a year in federal prison. He arrived at the facility—ironically, set on an island accessible only by air or by boat—on August 21, 1927.

Charged with violation of U.S. immigration laws, Chaney had, according to the prison's records, claimed "not guilty" up to the end.

The records included some other interesting minutiae concerning its prisoners. Chaney, we learn from the two pages on which his entry appears, was thirty years of age at the time of his 1927 arrival, and stood five feet eight and a half inches, packing one hundred sixty six pounds. His hair was dark brown, his complexion ruddy.

The ledger reveals that he reported his occupation to be aviator, and his religion to be Baptist. His home address was recorded as "Longdale" in California, but as there is no such designation, the likely mistaken answer was Lawndale, a city close to the Gardena location of the air field where Chaney's student aviator, A. J. Daugherty, lost his life.

Sadly, among the entries spanning the two pages in the ledger regarding Chaney, we learn that he did not provide the required information regarding his parents' names or address, but that he did declare the information required about his wife. Apparently she and their four children remained in "Longdale" in southern California while he spent his time isolated at the island prison up north.

Provided he minded his behavior during his stay, with good time, he could expect to be released on June 10, 1928.

Above: Photograph of the United States Penitentiary on McNeil Island, Washington, about ten years after Burley R. Chaney's incarceration there in 1927; photograph courtesy National Archives and Records Administration via Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Wheels of Justice, Part Two

While newspaper reports can take a drama-infused moment and convert it into dry, impartial recitation, don't think for a moment that the unfolding events of this scene—the airport shooting which killed a suspected member of a smuggling ring in southern California—were anything but wrought with emotion. From the moment of the coroner's inquest, when flight instructor Burley Chaney took the stand, deep emotions propelled some unscripted outbursts.

Discovering that Chaney's relationship with his now-dead student aviator stretched back to their mutual roots in Ohio, it can seem understandable to see his obvious emotion throughout the court proceedings.

At the Los Angeles County coroner's inquest in early May, 1927, rising to his feet at the witness stand, Chaney had hurled out, "You're a bunch of dirty murderers," speaking of the four uniformed immigration officers sitting in a row in front of him. Newspaper reports characterized him as red-faced and "swollen with rage" at the moment of his finger-pointing outburst. (The immigration agents—at least two of them—were exonerated of the charges after thirty minutes of deliberation by the coroner's jury.)

Still, it's hard to determine the source of anger for a person who not only witnessed the shooting of a friend sitting right before his eyes, but faced some serious charges in the affair, himself.

After the verdict was reached on the first of two counts facing Chaney and his two suspected accomplices—two other pilots were acquitted of that first count—the three were required to stand trial a second time. Beginning the next day, the task would be to determine whether the three aviators had conspired to violate United States immigration laws.

In that first hurdle, though immigration officials had claimed they had arrested six Chinese aliens—and insisted they had proof that the six had been smuggled across the border from Mexico—apparently the nexus could not be established between those aliens and the source of their transportation.

With this new trial, however, the task was simply to determine intent, not action.

The penalty, should the three be found guilty of this second charge, could be a sentence of up to two years in federal prison or a fine of ten thousand dollars. Or possibly both.

At the conclusion of that trial—Thursday, July 21, 1927—all three aviators were found guilty as charged. The sentencing would follow the next Monday. 

Wheels of Justice, Part One

There is no telling—at least from newspaper reports—what transpired in the new friendship between Arthur J. Daugherty and Burley R. Chaney, once they arrived in Los Angeles in 1925. Certainly, their traveling partner—the one who introduced the two, Arthur's brother Marion Daugherty—had chosen to return all the way back home to Ohio shortly after their arrival out west. And Arthur landed the job at the air field that he was so eager to get.

Other than that, we have no way to document the events between that 1925 arrival and the day of April 30, 1927, when A. J. Daugherty instantly lost his life in a "trap" set by federal immigration authorities. Whether the friendship during those two years included shady connections with strangers who turned out to be smugglers may possibly only be revealed by inspecting official court records—if even then.

Court proceedings—or at least the journalists covering them—shifted their focus, once deliberations began regarding the guilt of men arrested for supposed involvement in the suspected smuggling ring. Moving from determining whether the federal agents were acting appropriately when they shot at Chaney's plane, the task was now to examine whether specified arrestees were guilty of various charges.

Even these charges were handled through different cases. At first, when the news came out on the Associated Press newswire on July 15, it named two aviators—Emmett Longbrake and John J. O'Brien, but not Burley Chaney himself—and declared they were "acquitted in Federal Court of smuggling Chinese into Los Angeles from Mexican points by airplane."

The acquittal came out that evening, following less than six hours of deliberation. However, that was on only the first of two counts. Right on the heels of that news came a second trial, which began the very next morning.

While the charge for the first trial was that the two aviators were returning from Tijuana, Mexico, with "a cargo of Chinese" on the morning of the shooting, the following day's charges would be for conspiracy to break U.S. immigration laws. In that case, Chaney's name would be added to the roster of those being tried.

If the question on Day One was, "so, did you do it?" the question on the following day would be, "so if you didn't do it, did you mean to do it?"

Great Friends

When the oldest son of Lewis James Daugherty and Nora Flowers was born, it was right in the middle of the year 1900. By the time young Arthur James Daugherty was old enough to register for the draft, it was one day shy of two months before the German signing of the Armistice. It is doubtful that Lewis and Nora ever had to face seeing their son leave home to serve his country in war time.

Nor did they ever endure the same for their second son, Arthur's younger brother Marion, who trailed him by two years. Yet the two Perry County boys, who shared so many interests and experiences together, also shared a friendship with another local boy who did serve in what was then known as the Great War.

Burley Russell Chaney, born May 9, 1897, in nearby Coshocton County, was just the right number of years older than the two Daugherty boys to be part of the United States armed forces to serve in that war to end all wars. He enlisted only a week before Arthur had registered, and almost immediately received his honorable discharge on December 20 of that same year.

Arthur's brother Marion had been the first to meet B. R. Chaney, most likely on account of the three young men's mutual interest in mechanics and employment in local garages. When Arthur had begun discussing his dreams of working in the emerging field of aircraft, Marion knew just the person to whom he should introduce his aspiring aviator brother.

The year was, by then, 1921, and the Daugherty boys were off, having left their Ohio home to seek work in various garages in Florida. Chaney, after his service at the end of the war, had returned home to Coshocton, married, and signed on with the city's police force as their first traffic officer.

By the time the idea had fully formed, it was 1925. Marion had contacted Burley Chaney and the three had agreed that the Daugherty brothers would return to Ohio and meet Burley in Zanesville, "and from there go on to California." As Marion explained,

Chaney, I think, had some interest in a commercial aviation field near Los Angeles and I know for sure he was in the government service during the World war.

Sharing a mutual interest in "airships," Arthur and Burley, upon meeting, became "great friends." The three friends stuck to their plan and headed to southern California. When they arrived, Burley arranged to give Arthur the coveted job at the air field and, as we've since discovered, a chance at learning how to fly.

As for Arthur's brother, it's unclear whether he had planned to stay all along but then changed his mind, or had planned on tagging along just for the journey, itself. When Marion Daugherty concluded, in the May 2, 1927, recounting in The Zanesville Signal of how it all started, his was an explanation of "the circumstances which led his brother to engage in aviation and his ultimate separation from family ties."

When Chaney gave Arthur the job he was hoping for, his younger brother's plain explanation of what happened next was simply, "I came back on July 5, but Arthur stayed on."

  

"The Place for Us"

In the story of A. J. Daugherty and the unexpected loss of his life on an airfield in southern California in 1927, it seemed there were a few missing details—at least, in my mind. First was the question of just how keen he was on learning to fly, and what prompted him to develop that interest. But the second thing I was wondering about—and this likely is the more basic question—was just how Arthur J. Daugherty ended up in California if he was a local boy from Somerset, Ohio.

While the California newspapers reporting the shooting focused on the incident itself and the underlying accusations of smuggling, finding the newspaper coverage from back in Ohio near his Perry County hometown provided a different picture. This was where I could begin finding the answers to my questions on the set up that led to the tragedy.

As it turned out, an article hidden on the seventh page of The Zanesville Signal, the main newspaper published near the Daugherty hometown, covered those questions on the Monday following the April 30 shooting. The source for much of the information turned out to be Arthur's next younger brother, Marion, who by the time of the 1927 news article had moved from the family home in Somerset to the state capital, Columbus. That fifty mile move brought him much closer to where jobs were easier to come by.

According to Marion, "Ever since Arthur was a kid back on our farm, he liked to tinker with mechanics." After he completed his schooling, according to his brother, Arthur worked as a mechanic at a local garage until in his early twenties.

Marion apparently shared that same interest in mechanics, too:

I worked right with him because I liked it, too. Finally, we decided to get away from home for a while and came to Columbus. We worked in garages here for nearly a year.

Arthur's brother recalled the various moves the two had made, following their wish to work in all things mechanical. From their early stint in Columbus, they had returned back home to Somerset, then struck out on an adventure, moving to Florida. Following the job opportunities there, they moved from one town to another, working in various garages for about three months.

It was during that transitional time in Florida when the brothers honed in on their evolving interests in mechanical opportunities.

My brother said he would like to learn something about airplane motors and wanted to try his hand at flying sometime. Los Angeles seemed to be the place for us.

Finding their way to California wasn't a straightforward proposition, however. There was one more step before their plan could bring the brothers to California, and that required them first to return, once again, back home to Ohio.

A Father Takes Action

As reports of the sudden death of Arthur James Daugherty rocketed through the news wires in California, word also reached home, back in Perry County, Ohio. Understandably concerned, the victim's father, Lewis Daugherty, demanded answers. He turned to his local congressman, M. G. Underwood of nearby New Lexington, insisting on a thorough investigation.

The congressman, in turn, telegraphed the department of labor and immigration in Washington, D.C., to follow through with his constituent's request.

Apparently preparing an official statement, A. J. Daugherty's father was quoted in the local newspaper, The Zanesville Signal, on Monday, May 2:

We intend to make a thorough probe of the affair...and if possible, place the responsibility of my son's death on the guilty parties. All I know regarding the killing of my son is what I have seen in the newspapers but I do not think Arthur was guilty of any wrong doing.

The news, indeed, must have been a shock to the family. And, just as any parent would be likely to do, this father was convinced of the innocence of his own child.

Fixing Responsibility: the Rush to Conclude

On April 30, 1927—the same day Ohioan Arthur James Daugherty was shot and killed while attempting to land his plane in Gardena, California—a local newspaper reported that four immigration inspectors "claimed that they had been assigned to catch smugglers of Chinese from Tia Juana."

That very day, the United Press news wire service had picked up the story and spread it far and wide, at least throughout the state of California, for—with discrepancies, of course—that basic story could be found on the same day in publications as far north as Healdsburg (where, however, the number of federal agents had been reduced to three).

A shooting death such as this required, of course, a response by local law enforcement. Tasked with that duty at the scene of the incident in Gardena was the sheriff for Los Angeles County. The proper procedure was quickly attended to, and preparations for the sheriff's inquest were reported in the news by May 2.

By this time, three aviators were named as suspects in a smuggling ring, and a statement revealed that ten Chinese immigrants were being smuggled into the country from Tijuana, Mexico. The International News Service report carried by the Oxnard, California, Press-Courier that day also mentioned the curious admission that "the Federal men set a 'trap' and shot only when Chaney [the student pilot's instructor] tried to escape."

However, that same day, a different wire service—United Press—reported in a story carried in the Berkeley Daily Gazette that the Los Angeles County coroner had postponed the inquest in response to a request by the federal immigration authorities. The delay would permit the federal office the time they needed to produce witnesses from San Diego who were supposedly key in fingering Daugherty as part of a smuggling ring.

By the time of this report, the number of aviators—each of them named—had increased from three to seven. They were by now characterized as members of a smuggling ring.

The inquest proceedings opened the next day, May 3. By this time, the feds had produced two men, identified as operators of a Tijuana bus line. In their testimony, they were able to positively identify two of the seven airmen "held on suspicion" as men they had met at a ranch in Mexico, but could not provide any further explanation as to how the Chinese aliens were transported to America, nor could they identify any of the planes supposedly used in the suspected operation.

That, at least, was the report provided in a newspaper up north in Berkeley, California. Meanwhile, closer to the hearing itself, a Santa Ana newspaper dated that same May 3 reported that two federal agents "were completely exonerated in connection with the flier's death." This conclusion, delivered by a coroner's jury, was returned after only thirty minutes' deliberation.

Meanwhile, the Immigration Director announced the arrest of six Chinese immigrants with "positive evidence that they had been smuggled across the border."

Getting the Details Right

When breathless news reports mangle the fine points of a breaking story, I become skeptical over the possibility of a hidden agenda muddying the details. Somehow, when I encountered the news clipping concerning the sudden death of a man—A. J. Daugherty—I started getting that same feeling.

The ambush, by four federal immigration inspectors shooting into a plane during touch and go exercises by a student aviator, resulted in the instant death of Arthur James Daugherty on April 30, 1927. The resultant news reports over the next several days were full of discrepancies. Everything from the number of inspectors involved to the number of suspected Chinese immigrants in tow varied, depending on which day the report was published, and where the newspaper was printed.

When the rush to publish outruns the editorial professionalism of accuracy, something has to be at the root of the race. Since I was pretty sure it wouldn't have been on account of any outpouring of sympathy for the student aviator, himself, I thought I'd take a look around to see if I could uncover any other motivations firing up such rabid interest.

The only blip from history that I could recall was a political maneuver which, at its introduction, far predated this 1927 incident—but then, I was never any good at remembering the dates of history. Dates were what made me detest history as a subject in school, and I still recoil from the practice of noting years of occurrences.

Thankfully, in today's world, minute details like dates are what the Internet is for. Why trouble yourself with remembering when such facts can be googled?

With that simple act, my hunch was verified: though it was in 1882 that American president Chester Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, the law was extended through a number of legislative moves until it was finally repealed in 1943. Thus, this news furor in 1927 was in the very midst of an era in which the country's policy was to ban immigration of Chinese laborers (and, ultimately, their families as well).

I had been aware of this law, thanks to presentations by various Bay area genealogists who have been involved with Angel Island immigration station history. What hadn't stuck with me was the date range—and how recent it was. Nor was I aware of any specific operations to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the country, particularly from Mexico. Discovering this news report was not only a shock from the angle of family history—this was, after all, someone from my mother in law's Flowers line in Perry County, Ohio—but an eye opener to the possibilities for underground activity as a counter-movement against this law.

Obviously, once again, researching my own family's history meant delving deeper into the history of my state, my country, and those specific details of immigration history. Genealogy never stands alone nor operates within a vacuum. We are all part of the historic context forming the backdrop to our lifespan. Interwoven with our culture and its events, our lives couldn't possibly be understood without that broader perspective in our research.

Day in the Life of a Student Aviator

Despite intermittent challenges to one's personal sense of vertigo, the role of student aviator is not one I'd assume to be ridden with drama or intrigue. Not so, apparently, for the aspiring airman who turned out, coincidentally, to have been fourth cousin to my mother in law.

About the same time I unearthed my mother in law's genealogical relationship with Flowers family descendant Arthur James Daugherty, fellow native of Perry County, Ohio, I also discovered news articles reporting his sudden death and suspected role in a human smuggling scheme in southern California.

According to a United Press news wire only two days after the April 30, 1927, shooting which brought about the Ohio man's death, the local immigration official overseeing the agents involved in the incident requested more time for the investigation so that he could "produce witnesses from San Diego in an effort to show that Daugherty was a member of a smuggling ring engaged in bringing Chinese into this country."

Just as had the articles on the shooting incident itself, details in reports I found on the smuggling charges varied widely. Some reports fingered Daugherty as the smuggler. Some named both Daugherty and his supposed flight instructor, Burley R. Chaney. Others indicated up to seven other aviators in a smuggling ring, and anywhere from a few to "a score" of Chinese immigrants who were illegally brought into the country. 

Following the unclear reports of the actual incident itself—when student aviator A. J. Daugherty was shot by federal immigration officials sometime during the landing or takeoff of the plane he was learning to fly—journalists turned their attention to the next step in the investigative journey, the coroner's inquest.

All of this unexpected excitement was, for me, quite a startling launch into a genealogical project. And not only was this a local news story I had found, but one which was covered in newspapers throughout the state. Besides the expected coverage in the Los Angeles area, where the tragic event occurred, the story could be found in newspapers in the state's central valley, the Bay area, and even as far north as Healdsburg, California.

What at first seemed to be undue curiosity in what I thought was just a local story—a tragic one, admittedly, but a southern California event—turned out to hold interest for a significant number of people throughout the state. Puzzling, that is, until I took into account the broader historical context of the times.

This expanded coverage, presumably, was not just a reaction fueled by a normal sense of justice in recoiling from such official statements about the "regrettable" shooting which was done merely by those "acting in the line of duty." The expanded focus may well have been due to another political maneuver which happened to be holding sway at the same time.

Family Secret? Or Gossip Around Town?

Whenever I've run across an outrageous story about a distant family member—say, something like the news articles we've recently stumbled upon, regarding the young aviation student shot point-blank upon landing his craft at an airfield—I've wondered how many members of the family actually knew about the event.

Take the story of John Syme Hogue that I found a year ago while researching my own mother's line—the incredible story of the safe cracker who kept getting away, even when his luck seemed to run out and he actually shot a law enforcement officer. I tried (very circumspectly, of course) to contact current family members who have worked on that same family tree at Ancestry, to strike up a conversation in hopes of detecting whether the man's descendants were even aware of his murky past, but have had no response.

It leaves me wondering whether such news stories even get passed down by family from generation to generation. Or are these the types of stories which prompt the older generations to say, like my own father, "Aaah, you don't wanna know that."

I've heard other people mention how their parents or grandparents were reticent when it came to talking about the past, especially about family members long gone. Sometimes, it was just due to the taciturn personality of the individual being questioned. But other times? Might it have been symptomatic of skeletons in the closet?

Because this situation with Arthur James Daugherty was different—after all, I only knew about this news story as of last week because of the news clippings linked as hints to his file at Ancestry—I took the opportunity to write to the person originating the link. I can't tell how close that relationship is, but if the person is willing and able to give us a behind-the-scenes report, there are a few things I'd like to ask.

For one thing, I'm curious how many of the Daugherty family back home in Perry County were aware of what happened to one of their native sons. Was this the gossip on everyone's lips, back in Somerset, Ohio? Or was it circumspectly hushed in consideration of the grieving—and likely, surprised—family?

Then, too, I'm sure the question on everyone's mind had to be: was he guilty as accused? Was A.J. Daugherty really a smuggler? Or was he just the unfortunate innocent caught in the crossfire of misinformed but zealous law enforcement agents?

Of course, these are factors which seem to have no bearing on genealogical research—but for those, like me, who have self-styled their research as family history, these questions are quite pertinent to our goals of accessing a fuller picture of the individuals who people our family trees.