Seventh Generation

360. Andrew Bressman was born in 1876 in Percival, Fremont Co., IA.¹⁹

JWB Note:
The following note came to me via Corrinne Ellis. The original source of the note is: Nonpareil (Council Bluffs, Iowa), October 3, 1897 newspaper.

"In the federal court yesterday by holding a night session that lasted until 11 o'clock Judge Woolson managed to dispose of all the criminal cases on the docket for this term.

On court convening in the morning Judge Woolson delivered his instructions to the jury in the case of George McKnight the Omaha man who in conjunction with Andrew Bresserman, who had pleaded guilty, was charged with passing counterfeit money in his possession. The jury after being out about five hours brought in a verdict acquitting him on the charge of passing but found him guilty of having counterfeit money in his possession.

Andrew Bresserman, who pleaded guilty to the double charge of passing counterfeit money and having it in his possession with the intent to pass it, was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary at Fort Madison. Bresserman is a young man only 19 years of age and was arrested in company with George McKnight in a wagon about four miles east of the city by Chief of Police Canning.

Bresserman and McKnight came from Omaha and were, it was claimed, on their way to Des Moines. The former passed a spurious dollar at a Broadway grocer and when arrested twenty other counterfeit dollars were found in the wagon. He has been in the county jail several months awaiting trial. He has tried to screen McKnight all along by claiming that he alone was responsible for the counterfeit money and that McKnight knew nothing about it being in the wagon. The court intimated in passing sentence that if Bresserman had informed the government officers where he obtained the counterfeit money he would have dealt more leniently with him. Bresserman was completely unnerved when he learned his sentence and broke down and wept bitterly.

McKnight, his partner, got off with a sentence of two years in the penitentiary at Annamosa, the jury having found him only guilty on the charge of having counterfeit money in his possession. His attorneys applied for a new trial, but this was overruled by the court. In their verbal statements to the court the attorneys gave as one of the grounds for a new trial the alleged misconduct on the part of the jury. The court demanded a more specific statement and one submitted in writing, but after a brief consultation among themselves the defendant's attorneys receded from this position and practically admitted that they had nothing on which to base their charge of misconduct on the part of the jury.

They then made a strong plea for leniency on the grounds of sympathy that the prisoner had a wife and three little children depending upon him. In answer to the plea Prosecuting Attorney Fullen informed the court that the picture had been considerably overdrawn by the prisoners attorneys. Instead of being the model husband they showed him to be the facts were that at the time of his arrest McKnight's wife was separated from him and was earning her own living in a hotel in Des Moines. He stated that letters found on McKnight when arrested showed that she had left him because of ill treatment. When she was informed of his arrest Mrs. McKnight informed the government officers in Des Moines that she would never live with him again as he had got mixed up with the McCarty counterfeiting gang. This the attorneys for McKnight denied as being untrue but Mrs. McKnight, who was in the courtroom on being questioned admitted having said so."

JWB: Mary Etta McCarty, wife of Robert Jacob Bressman is somehow related to the McCarty gang mentioned above.
End of notes.

Andrew Bressman and Mary (Mollie) Robbins were married on 1 June 1907 in Omaha, Douglas Co., NE.⁷⁵ Mary (Mollie) Robbins, daughter of Theodore Martin Holcomb and Mary Like (Lyke), was born in 1875 in Wisconson.¹⁹ She died on 13 March 1925 at the age of 50 in Omaha, Douglas Co., NE.¹⁹ She was buried in Bellevue Cem., Sarpy Co., NE.¹⁹

Andrew Bressman-833 and Mary (Mollie) Robbins-2335 had the following children:

+720

i.

Doris Regina Bressman-2336.