[Granville-Hough] 30 Sep 2009 - Funeral Facts

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

  Bee Sullivan’s role in killing Victor J. Sullivan has already been 
noted. It seems that he and Victor had been witnesses for the 
prosecution in the killing of George Sullivan in the Mill Pond at Bunker 
Hill. The intended victim had been someone else named Robert Dean. This 
does not seem to have been part of the provocation for which Victor J. 
Sullivan was killed, but it has been mentioned as such by others who did 
not know Victor J. Sullivan. It seems that Bee Sullivan was involved in 
making and selling moonshine whiskey. Before 1920, he disappeared and 
his family had to get along as best it could. When he came back in the 
1920s, he had money and soon had plans to leave again.
What really disgusted Sullivan Hollow people was Bee Sullivan’s 
manipulation of his daughter Cecil E. He got her to go to St. Louis or 
to Kansas City with him where she was groomed to become a high-paid 
prostitute. Cecil E. realized what was happening and wrote her brother 
Neulon about her situation. Neulon, or Newt, went to St. Louis, or to 
Kansas City, killed his father, and rescued his sister. Not long after 
that time, Neulon himself was killed in Laurel, MS, in a train accident. 
He was never tried for killing his father. Apparently, Cecil E. returned 
to Sullivan’s Hollow and married and may have had children. In her early 
years, Cecil E. was the only girl at New Haven School who had lipstick 
and makeup and a fur coat. No one else could afford such things.

--------------

1933, 23 Feb. Smith County Reformer. “Funeral services were held at Zion 
Hill Cemetery this week for Bee Sullivan who was killed last week at his 
home in Kansas City, KS. Mr. Sullivan was a former resident of Smith 
County, being a member of the Sullivan family of the famous “Sullivan’s 
Hollow.” He left this section several years ago and made his home in the 
state of Kansas where he is reputed to have amassed considerable 
property. Funeral services were conducted by the Rev. M. Nestor, pastor 
of the Mize Baptist Church.” 

--------------

GWH: I hope Rev Nestor was well paid for inventing a suitable sermon.

The Smith County paper may have the facts more accurately than my 
recollection about the place of Bee Sullivan’s death. The story I 
recollect always mentioned St. Louis, but it could have been Kansas 
City, MO, or Kansas City, KS. What kind of obituary would you write 
about someone like Bee Sullivan? The Smith County papers took a very 
neutral approach. I assume the facts are more correct than my memory. 
More could be said about how Bee Sullivan accumulated wealth and 
property. I have seen such an obituary which could be paraphrased a bit 
with Sullivan’s Hollow names and places inserted, and it would fit well 
enough. It is the actual published obituary of Enoch Hoff (from the 
Marietta, OH, “Western Spectator” of 15 May 1812) and it goes as follows:

--------------

“It is a general rule that death is accompanied by grief and perhaps to 
his mother this might be true, but last Thursday at Cow Run, ENOCH HOFF 
died of fever; and it would take a strange man indeed to mourn his 
passing. Although his mother is a kind and gentle woman, this was not 
passed on to her son who made his living through the miseries of other 
human beings. Catching run-away slaves and selling them back to their 
owners was how he spent his time to a point that he was known throughout 
the Cow Run region as a “nigger catcher.” He also caused trouble in 
other ways, and only the high regard for his mother prevents us from 
exposing them here.
It must prove that a man does not get his life’s tendencies from his 
parents and other close relatives since even though dying in Prince 
William County, VA, about a decade ago, his sire was Reverend Daniel 
Hoff, a farmer and a man of God in that region as well as in his native 
New Jersey. There, according to his wife, Sophia, Hoff’s father was John 
Hoff, also a Christian man who lived in a rural area near a village of 
the family name. The violence of the (Revolutionary) war near this 
region caused the Reverend Hoff and his family to move to Northern 
Virginia. Also the late Enoch’s other grandfather, William Moffit, was a 
Christian minister who followed the Hoff group to Ohio along with other 
residents, including the well-known Dye family.
Thus, God moves in mysterious ways and the 39 years of Hoff’s life does 
nothing but substantiate this. He will not be missed by his neighbors 
who have had the strength of character to tolerate his nefarious 
activities. Our sympathies go to his family who deserve more.”

--------------

About thirty years ago, I was researching my Walker family cousins (from 
Sullivan's Hollow), and one lived in Kansas City. It is quite possible 
that she had known Bee Sullivan there. Anyway she or someone else 
recorded or wrote me about the killing of Bee Sullivan with the comment 
that Neulon should have known that Bee Sullivan was not father of Cecil 
E.and no more kin to her that he was to his wife, her mother. Well, I 
was not researching Sullivans at that time, and the killing occurred in 
1933 when I was 11 years old, so it just became one of those peculiar 
bits of gossip that get stuck in one's memory. It did seem to me that 
the writer believed the killing was not justified for the conditions stated.