The Heiress of Strasburg: The Lauer “Kidnapping” of 1909

A Tuscarawas County “heiress” once declared incompetent defied scandal, married for love, and built a lasting family legacy.

Josephine Matilda Lauer (1878-1961), known as Tillie, was born in Somerdale, Tuscarawas County, the daughter of farmer Martin Lauer (1856-1929) and his wife Amelia Behnke Lauer (1859-1890). As a child she lived with her family in Ohio, but her mother’s relatives in Missouri would oddly shape the course of her life. A maternal uncle went west, acquired land, and accumulated considerable wealth. For a brief time Tillie and her family joined him there, but they eventually returned to Ohio. Illness and the deaths of close family members followed, leaving Tillie increasingly vulnerable and dependent upon extended kin.

Her Missouri uncle took in and raised a boy in Missouri, and before his death he left his property to the young man. Gravely ill himself, the young heir remembered Tillie, whom he had once known and cared for, and amended his will so that his estate would pass to her. Within weeks the young man and Josephine’s mother were dead. Tillie, still a young woman of limited education and described as mentally incompetent from birth, became the beneficiary of a western farm and town property valued at approximately $16,000 in 1909, more than $500,000 by today’s value. The inheritance, instead of securing her independence, placed her at the center of family tensions. A guardian was appointed to manage her estate, and she was moved among relatives in Tuscarawas County while a monthly allowance was drawn for her care.

In the spring of 1908 Tillie met Charles Andrew McCoy (1873-1957), a veteran of the Spanish-American War and a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad freight conductor. Their courtship quickly became the subject of gossip and alarm. The couple secretly married in the early fall of 1909 after she disappeared from her brother’s Strasburg home in November 1909. Local authorities accused McCoy of kidnapping, asserting that Tillie lacked the legal capacity to marry without the consent of her guardian. Telegrams that announced their marriage and honeymoon only intensified public interest. A grand jury was convened, but declined to indict McCoy, and the legal battle shifted to the civil courts in an attempt to annul the marriage and retain strict control over her estate.

The case became one of the most talked-about proceedings in Tuscarawas County in the early 1900s. Testimony examined Tillie’s mental capacity, her understanding of marriage vows, and the proper management of her property. Ultimately, the court allowed the marriage to stand but ordered that her estate remain in trust. A guardian would continue to oversee the western holdings and distribute income for her benefit. By the middle of 1910, after appeals and negotiations, a compromise settlement closed the matter, preserving both the marital bond and the financial safeguards surrounding her inheritance.

Whatever doubts the courts entertained about Tillie’s capacity, her subsequent life demonstrated stability and endurance. She and Charles moved to Lorain, Ohio in 1910, and that same year she gave birth to a son who died in infancy. The family later settled in Wayne Township, Tuscarawas County, where Josephine bore several more children. Census records from the succeeding decades document the growing household, rooted in Tuscarawas County despite the western origins of her estate.

Tillie outlived the controversies that once defined her name in local headlines. She and Charles moved to the State of Washington later in life, where they stayed with children. Charles Andrew McCoy, died in 1957 in Adams County, Washington. Tillie herself died there in October 1961 at the age of eighty-three. The woman once portrayed in sensational newspaper accounts as a helpless heiress at the center of a kidnapping scandal ultimately lived a long life as wife, mother, and matriarch. Her story, which began in hardship and courtroom drama, closed quietly far removed from the the county that had once debated her fate.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2026.