Could a Methodist minister get away with murdering a Catholic priest?

Maybe so, in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1921. Ohio State law professor Sharon Davies has written what sounds like a book too harsh for me to read -- about a nearly forgotten case that mesmerized the nation at the time -- but I can at least mention it. Rising Road is discussed in the Legal History Blog with additional links.

College football and genealogy

Writing in Friday's issue of the Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio), Michael Arace reports on Robert Neal's report on his Methodist relatives, Granville and Oliver Frambes. Granville sold much of the land on which Ohio State University now stands; Orville went west as a missionary and founded the Los Angeles Academy which became the University of Southern California. Without this pair of brothers tonight's college football extravaganza might not have been possible.

If you're more interested in the Frambes families than in the score of the OSU-USC showdown, one starting point a couple of moderately well sourced online databases are at worldconnect when you search on Granville Frambes. Orville married a Stevens, and Google Book Search shows snippets of a Stevens book that at least mentions Frambes.