Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with IHeartRadio.

A year, wrote Ambrose Bierce, is, quote, a period of 365 disappointments.

Ambrose was an American Civil War veteran, and he was also a writer. He was one of

the most famous journalists of the late 19th century. He was a literary critic, a poet, and a short

story writer, primarily exploring themes of war, death, and the general absurdity of life. He had a caustic wit and was a sharp-tonged,

eviscerating cynic. It said he kept both a human skull and a cigar box of supposedly

an enemy's ashes on his desk. His motto in life was, quote, nothing matters. He's been called an editorialist,

a journalist, and a fabulous, and a veteran, and one of the biggest disappearing acts of the

20th century. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky. And I'm Holly Fry. Ambrose Beers disappeared when he

was 71 years old. He rode into Mexico, and that's about the last anyone ever heard from him.

But before we talk about his many deaths that have been described since his disappearance,

let's talk about his very big life.

Ambrose Gwinnett Beers was born on June 24, 1842, the 10th of 13 children to Marcus Aurelius and Laura Beers.

The Beers family lived in Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, a primarily fundamentalist community that was close to the West Virginia border.

His father was a farmer but held several jobs, including shopkeeper, and he'd been elected to county overseer of the poor.

That was a position that was responsible for administering relief such as food and clothing

and supervising care of those living in poverty.

He was never a successful man, at least not when it came to money or influence.

He and Laura were, though, avid readers, and some argued that the family's book collection

could be the largest in the county.

Though Ambrose never had much good to say about his family,

he did not see eye to eye with their longstanding puritanical ways.

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