On March 9, 1911, after serving 15 months of an 18-month sentence, Sherman Elwood Dodge (also known as Frank E./French E. Dodge), was released from McNeil Island Federal Prison located deep in the Puget Sound west of Tacoma, Washington. According to his prison record, he entered prison with the clothes on his back, a small gold ring, and $1.59. Along with these items, he was given $1.34 which had been credited to him upon his release from prison.
He was sentenced to 18 months at hard labor on December 16, 1909 for impersonating a U.S. Officer, in an attempt to swindle Orville B. Connor of Shedd, Oregon, out of $500 dollars and his wife, Cora Connor, with whom he had an affair several years earlier while living in Pendleton, Oregon. When he entered prison on December 26, 1909, Sherman was 5'8", 138 lbs., brown hair and hazel brown eyes. No mugshot of him exists (although pictures of some of the other prisoners from this time still exist). Below is the prison register for Sherman.
His original date of release was June 25, 1911. Sherman was released 3 months early for good behavior. For countless years, nobody in our family knew what happened to Sherman as all contact had been lost. I have spent years searching for any semblance of any record that could identify Sherman after his release from prison without any success. I should preface that I wouldn't be drawn to this information which I have found below if I didn't think there wasn't a possibility that it could be Sherman.
On the afternoon of March 27, 1911, an unidentified individual was struck and killed by a westbound passenger train while crossing a set of railroad tracks outside of Tacoma. This spot was known as Dead Man's Cut and was notorious for seeing other people killed at this place. The individual did not have any identifying information on him and was judged to be 55-60 years old. He was 5'8", 160 pounds and had black hair and a full black beard. He was 'fairly well dressed' according to the local newspapers. He was never identified (and no person matching his description appears to have been reported as missing) and interred in an unknown grave on April 8, 1911.
As there is no record of Sherman after his release from prison on March 9, 1911, I believe that this individual could be Sherman Elwood Dodge. He was the same height as Sherman. The hair color fits in with the hair color I have found for his brothers & sisters (brown or black). While Sherman had lost 20 pounds during his imprisonment in the Multnomah County Jail during 1909 (he was held here pending trial), it is very possible that he gained weight while in prison, especially working hard labor. Although Sherman would have been 36 in April of 1911, it is possible that being in prison and sentenced to hard labor would have aged him considerably. It is also possible that he sold or pawned his gold ring in order to purchase a new set of clothing, hence the description of being 'fairly well dressed'.
I had the thought one day to search for the word 'unidentified' in the Tacoma newspapers and this is what I found. Below are the newspaper articles I found regarding the unidentified individual that was killed by the passenger train on March 27, 1911, as well as the death certificate. Again, I can't say for certain this is Sherman, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility. Again, I wouldn't be drawn to this information and conclusion if I didn't think that it couldn't be Sherman.
