Portrait of Mass Murder

The following is a story, historically documented in a journal recording of my great-great-great-great grandmother Bartheny Lanham, born in County Cork, Ireland and came to America to marry a man named Finney Simpson, a self-taught veterinarian, settling in Western New York. Believe it or not, each time I have read the journal of the dear little Irish grannie, I dream of her as though she and I are seated at the kitchen table having a sip of Irish whiskey while she puffs on her tiny corn cob pip