Across the Fence: Flossie – love child of the 1880s

On Feb. 3, 1889, Mamie's grandmother was assassinated by a shotgun blast, in the back, from an unknown assailant. Some suspected that it was her daughter Rosie Lee, Mamie's birth mother, who yielded the shotgun that ended the short and turbulent life of Myra Maybelle Reed. However, no one was ever charged in the killing.

Rosie Lee was a suspect because of her rage against her mother who had forged Rosie's signature on a document that relinquished the infant Mamie to an orphanage in Siloam Springs, Ark.

Mamie had been conceived out of wedlock, a condition that Rosie's mother found disgraceful....