Grayson County TXGenWeb

The Bonham Daily Favorite

He Lived Half His Life as White Man and Hafl as Negro; Now Neither Race Will Claim Body
Denison, August ? - Neither race whilch sheltered him during life claimed him dead so Charley B. Hamilton and the mystery of his existence today lay in a neutral zone between the white and the colored sections of Oakwood Cemetery here.
Hamilton died months ago but only in the last few days have the facts of his strange "black and tan" career with his white and colored wives been revealed by the patient efforts of George Shields, local undertaker.
About 15 years ago an aged Negro woman owning a farm near here, advertised in a Negro paper for her nephew who had run away in childhood. Hamilton, a mulatto-appearing young man, arrived. He swore that he was the nephew and was accepted as the long lost heir. He married a Negro girl from a neighboring farm and lived with her until they were divorced. She now lives in Sherman.
The aunt and uncle died and Hamilton inherited their small estate. While making arrangements for its disposal, he died here at a Negro residence in southeast Denison. He was 43 years old. Authorities seeking relatives notified an Oklahoma wife mentioned in Hamilton's papers. She rushed here and to the surprise of al was not black but white! She identified the body as that of the husband who had married her in 1923. She was dumbfounded and left in tears when told that he had lived here as a Negro. "He gave me a big diamond engagement ring and I thought he was a good citizen," said the widow. "I was a poor school teacher and his proposal was like a dream coming true."
A mass of papers revealed that Hamilton had lived as a white man not only in southern Oklahoma with the school teacher but in many other places as well and had at one time been a construction contrator building churches and large residences.
A record of post office boxes at Tulsa, Oklahoma; Dallas and Sherman was found as well a papers showing he had lived at various times in Oklahoma City, Tonkawa and Ft. Worth.
Because of the revelations of the school teacher, local Negroes refused to allow Hamilton's burial in the Negro plot in the cemetery. It was then planned to bury him in the white section but protests from white persons arose. To solve the problem, authorities buried him between the two sections of the cemetery, half in one and half in the other.

Texas Death Certificate #2595