Murders, Mysteries and History of Crawford County, Pennsylvania 1800 – 1956

MURDERS, MYSTERIES AND HISTORY OF WFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 1800 – 1956

DON HILTON

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2012 Don Hilton. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/29/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6616-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6615-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916268

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Thanks To…

Preface

About This Book

A Short And Relatively Painless History

1800 – 1803 The Honorable Alexander Addison

1803 – 1829 The Honorable Jesse Moore

1829 – 1839 The Honorable Henry Shippen

1839 – 1843 The Honorable Nathaniel B. Eldred

1843 – 1851 The Honorable Gaylord Church

1851 – 1860 The Honorable John Galbraith

1860 – 1860 The Honorable Rasselas Brown

1860 – 1870 The Honorable Samuel P. Johnson

1870 – 1876 The Honorable Walter H. Lowrie

1876 – 1878 The Honorable S. Newton Pettis

1878 – 1888 The Honorable Pearson Church

1888 – 1898 The Honorable John J. Henderson

1898 – 1908 The Honorable Frank J. Thomas

1908 – 1928 The Honorable Thomas J. Prather

1928 – 1948 The Honorable O. Clare Kent

1948 – 1964 The Honorable Herbert A. Mook

Indexes Of Crime 

About The Author 

– My Brother Will –

Forever my Partner in Crime

THANKS TO…

Mystery maven J.D. Sikora for encouragement and guidance. The young and bright Clare Hooper, EngD., for across-the-pond opinions. The puckish Professor Janice Broder for thoughts on the topic, edits, and always-needed assistance with pesky punctuation. Dr. Kevin Weidenbaum for his astute and careful reading, questions about structure, and enthusiasm for the subject at hand.

Artist Kat Sikora for the cover art, also made possible by Mike Sample’s permission for use of the newspaper clippings—he’s the present-day publisher of the Titusville Herald. Ms. Peggy Laley Peterson and Ms. Margie Peterson were kind enough to bring me up to speed on the life of their justice-dealing kin.

The helpful people at the Centre County Historical Society, for information on Rockview Prison and Pennsylvania’s earliest electrocutions. The Conneaut Lake Area Historical Society, where this whole mess started. The Crawford County Historical Society, my second home through much of the research. The Warren County Historical Society, for information on early judges. If you don’t support your local historical society, then shame on you! Those records don’t get kept and microfilm readers don’t get fixed all by themselves, you know.

Gratitude is owed the ever-patient women working in the Office of the Recorder in the Crawford County Courthouse. The officers and staff of the Titusville Police Department. Keith Amolsch and Meadville’s WMGW. Finally, of course, my family and friends, who hardly ever complained of listening to all that murder stuff.

PREFACE

"How in the world did you ever get interested in that?" Well, while researching my books Sailing Through Time and Conneaut Lake Ferry Tales, I came across a 1924 article in a local newspaper, describing how an axe-wielding, one-legged farmhand murdered a young schoolteacher. It captured my attention, but I couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. I made an entry in my notebook and moved on.

I never forgot the one-legged man. He tickled my brain until, one dark and stormy night (and it really was a dark and stormy night), I retrieved my short notation and began digging. It was amazing to watch what I thought was an isolated incident blossom into a garden of noxious weeds.

What follows are the one hundred-plus Crawford County murders I found, along with a little history. I’ve detailed all crimes resulting in executions and several of the more sensational and interesting cases.

This book includes all of the deaths I could find where the initial charge was murder. A compilation of all manslaughter cases would take a length few would read, even were I willing to write it. You’ll also find crimes that would now likely be considered murder, even if they were not in past societies. A few cases don’t fit any of the above characteristic but are included because they struck my fancy.

I am certain that my list of killings is incomplete. That’s because information from the early part of the county’s history is spotty. Court records are inaccessible. Newspapers through the mid-1800s can be dense and difficult to read. They don’t always publish what we might think of as news. Different papers present different versions of the same story, twisting the facts until they’re nearly unrecognizable. You’ll see plenty of question marks (?) in the listings—indicating my inability to find those data.

I was lucky enough to meet individuals whose families were changed by some of the acts of violence I describe. For me, it helped drive home the following point: This stuff happened to real people. I grew uncomfortable as I moved into what I thought of as modern times; everything felt too close to home and so my list stops in 1956. That’s the year I was born.

I urge you to be gentle with anyone you recognize. Remember what my Grandma Esau whispered in my six-year-old ear when she caught me staring at a man with a disfigured face: It could just as easily be you!

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The 156-year span covered is subdivided by the judicial terms of Crawford County’s President Judges. Some of these esteemed gentlemen were on the bench for hardly a year. Others served twenty years, or more. Some presided over no murder trials. Others heard a great number. These facts give the book an uneven structure.

Population density isn’t the best predictor of crime, but it’s a reasonable start because fewer people commit fewer crimes. It takes a long while for the population of Crawford County to grow dense enough for murders to become frequent. The magic number is about 56,000 people, by my reckoning. In the county’s two major cities, Meadville and Titusville, killings are much more commonplace once their populations reach around 7,000.

I found seven murders in the first sixty-five years of the county but nearly two dozen in the two decades that followed. Skip to the mid-1860s to dive right into the action, but be sure to come back to the earliest years when courts dealt no-nonsense, frontier justice to those considered guilty.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. An on-going timeline presents information that helps tie local murders back to what was happening elsewhere in the county and the rest of the world. Along those same lines, some county history is described as are a few of the social changes that controlled the reasons for crimes and changes to those involved.

Scholarly does not describe my style of writing, but this is a book of facts. What you’ll read is based on research—nothing is made-up. The more involved narratives were adapted from newspapers of the day. Take a look at the final chapter—Sources and Sundries—for a description of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the materials used.

I was lucky to have smart people proof my text and offer suggestions, but I am responsible for the content. Any sparkling insights, or woeful mistakes, belong to me.

A SHORT AND RELATIVELY PAINLESS HISTORY

The land that forms present day Crawford County, in northwest Pennsylvania, United States, was purchased from Native Americans in 1784. Permanent white settlers arrived shortly thereafter, mostly along a series of fortifications strung northward from Fort Pitt where the Ohio River is created by the joining of the Allegheny and Monongahela.

Fort Franklin, built in 1787 where French Creek meets the Allegheny River, was the closest safe haven to what became Crawford County. Settlers fled to Franklin as late as 1793 for safety from marauding bands of what they called (among other things) Indians. The last fatal attack by natives on area settlers came on June 3, 1795, when James Findlay and Barnabas McCormick were shot and scalped while splitting rails a little north of where the outlet of Conneaut Lake joins French Creek. It’s likely the attackers were allies of the English who influenced native populations in the wilderness to the north and west.

When the first white explorers traveled along the 117-mile long French Creek (also then known as the In-nun-ga-ch, Venango, or Fleuve aux Boeufs), they found a large, flat valley already mostly devoid of trees. It was hedged on the west by steep hills and gave way to gentler but equally high elevations to the east. It was an ideal place to put down roots, and so settlement in Meadville, Pennsylvania began in 1787. Among the earliest to arrive was Samuel Lord, one of the men who first surveyed the area, and John and David Mead from east-central Pennsylvania who reconnoitered in 1787 and returned the following year to plant crops and winter over.

The eastern edge of what became county lands was populated somewhat more peacefully. The valley of the upper Allegheny River, that runs near that area, was dominated by the Seneca Leader Gaiänt’wakê (Cornplanter) who was mostly friendly to settlers. His influence was felt throughout that region and provided stability in the complicated relationship between the ever-growing number of newcomers and the natives they displaced.

Crawford County was legislated into existence by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on March 12, 1800. Like some of its surrounding sisters (Armstrong, Butler, Mercer, and Warren), Crawford was named for a hero of the American Revolution.

In June of 1782, during a raid into the great wilderness of Ohio, Colonel William Crawford had the misfortune of being captured by the British-allied Delawares who considered him a war criminal—a charge that may or may not have been true. Crawford was tortured, scalped alive, and slowly roasted to death. Considering those facts, a book on the murders that took place in his namesake county feels entirely appropriate.

1800 – 1803

THE HONORABLE ALEXANDER ADDISON

Alexander Addison’s silhouette shows him with an aristocrat’s bearing: a high forehead, straight nose, prominent chin, and a heavy, substantial face. His experience in Crawford County serves as early proof of the inextricable link between the courts and politics.

Crawford County’s first President Judge has a well-deserved reputation as a brilliant, if somewhat inflexible individual. A one-time Presbyterian preacher, he is happy to deliver homilies from the bench and tie the problems of those in trouble with the law to a lack of religious sincerity.

Early histories of Crawford County describe how Addison is impeached for a combination of his personality and denying an Associate Judge the opportunity to speak his mind on a case at hand. That is an inaccurate description of what really happened.

In Judge Addison’s time, there are two major political parties in the United States. The Republican/Democrats who champion strong states’ rights, an agriculturally-based economy, little or no central banking, few taxes, and a strict interpretation of the country’s Constitution.

Opposed to them are the Federalists who believe in a strong federal government, a strong manufacturing base, strong central banks, taxes, full federal coffers, and a less strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Addison is appointed by Pennsylvania Governor McKean who is elected on a Federalist platform. That party loses ground in 1801 when Thomas Jefferson becomes President of the United States. McKean sees the writing on the wall and jumps to the Republican/Democrats. As the weakened Federalists are swept from power, Jefferson’s party turns its efforts onto the Crawford County Judge who has been abandoned by McKean and is, literally, living far removed, in the frontier backwoods of the Commonwealth.

In January of 1803, the Pennsylvania State Senate impeaches Addison on the basis of an unspecified misdemeanor. They remove him from the bench and disqualify him from holding any other judicial office.

Addison’s days of sitting in legal judgment are over.

1800: John Adams is President of the United States. Future President Millard Fillmore is born. Crawford County also comes to life with 2,346 (white) people and the following townships already in place: Conneaut (west), Mead (central), and a forerunner of Oil Creek (east). From them, eight more originals are created in July of 1800: Beaver, Cussewago, Fairfield, Fallowfield, Sadsbury, Shenango, and Venango. (The creation of Crawford County’s thirty-five townships is presented here in a straightforward manner. How the townships came to be and evolved over time is beyond the scope of this book.)

THE EARLY DAYS OF JUSTICE

Meadville was already the center of justice for the Township of Mead in 1800 when Crawford was carved from an oversized Allegheny County. The first County Court was held in the William Dick residence on the northeast corner of Water Street and Cherry Alley, with David Mead and John Kelso as Associate Judges. By the second session, President Judge Alexander Addison was on the bench.

The county’s first real jail was three blocks north of the court, in the rear room of a tavern owned by Henry Richard on the southwest corner of Water Street and Steer’s Alley. Its first prisoner was jailed for contempt; it seems he created a disturbance by singing in the courtroom. The court asked him to be quiet. He responded with a shouted go to hell! In any century, that’s a bad idea. The prisoner, left alone in the untested jail, escaped by climbing up and out the chimney—he literally flue the coop!

In March 1804, the Commonwealth ordered the construction of a courthouse and jail. A two-storied hewn-log building was built on the west side of Meadville’s Public Square (the Diamond), with jail and jailor’s residence on the first floor and courtroom above.

The court at Meadville met on a quarterly basis and, at first, Crawford shared its judges with all of the equally, sparsely populated counties west of the Allegheny River.

THE GRAND JURY

Through the period covered by this book, an Indicting Grand Jury served an entry to the rest of the criminal court system. The circumstances of a case were presented to citizen jurors from across the county who decided if there was cause or evidence to move forward into a full-blown criminal trial.

While the Commonwealth was always represented, usually by the District Attorney, the accused brought their own legal mouthpiece only if they had the money. The right to counsel in an Indicting Grand Jury was not established in the early days, and the poor were assigned lawyers only when the judge saw a need.

The Grand Jury’s primary job was to determine if the facts of the case were compelling enough to justify a criminal trial for the accused. A true bill was returned if the jurors found reason to take the case forward into trial. The accused was then bound over to the next session of criminal court. Not a true bill indicated the facts did not warrant further action and the accused was set free—often to be re-arrested on different charges.

Judges varied in their instructions to the Grand Jury. Some wanted a gatekeeper, preventing what might be frivolous lawsuits. Others desired true bills for all but the most obviously innocent.

Crawford’s Grand Jury also performed an annual inspection of the infrastructure of the county legal system: the jail, poor-house, and courthouse itself. It was the body that decided if things were copasetic, or if purse strings were to be loosened for improvements, upgrades, or replacements.

Through the mid-1970s, the Commonwealth replaced Indicting Grand Juries with informational procedures of arraignments and hearings. Not everyone’s happy with the change, and there have been calls, through the years, for a return to the old way of doing things.

1800, OCTOBER: The Grand Jury hands down true bills for theft of personal property, assault and battery, and forcible entry. Figure it as proof that things really haven’t changed much over the centuries.

1801: There’s an Electoral College tie between Thomas Jefferson and his opponent, Aaron Burr. The U.S. House of Representatives splits the difference, making Jefferson President and Burr V.P. This must’ve made for some interesting policy discussions. In July, Oil Creek Township is reorganized, and Rockdale is created from Mead.

1802: West Point is established. Napoleon Bonaparte causes all kinds of trouble for a lot of people across the sea in Europe. Author Lydia Child is born. She writes stories and poetry in the fight for the freedom of slaves and women’s rights but ends up being best known to most of us for her poem Over the River and Through the Woods. Ludwig van Beethoven premieres his Moonlight Sonata.

1803: Ohio gains statehood—the first in the new century. The U.S. doubles its size with the Louisiana Purchase. In Scotland, William Symington shows off the first practical steamboat, the Charlotte Dundas (the name is that of his sponsor’s daughter—money has always talked). Crawford’s judges are shared with the counties of Erie, Mercer, Venango, Warren, and Beaver.

1803 – 1829

THE HONORABLE JESSE MOORE

Alexander Addison is impeached. Governor Thomas McKean appoints Jesse Moore. His portrait in the Crawford County Courthouse shows clear, blue-gray eyes peering directly from a full and clean-shaven face. A prominent nose over a cupid-bow mouth completes the picture of a dignified and courteous man.

A former land surveyor, Judge Moore is a short, rotund fellow who dresses in good, if old-fashioned, clothing. Partially bald, he powders what hair remains. When out and about, he favors drab, broad-brimmed, beaver hats. He wore leather boots, well polished, and his trousers drawn down over them, a frock coat, black satin waistcoast and black satin tie which held the wings of a Henry Clay collar against his heavy chin.

Jesse Moore is a learned man but has no formal training in law. With several years experience as a lay judge, he is fair, but is not considered brilliant by the attorneys practicing in his court. The county’s longest-serving judge, he dies suddenly on December 21 1829.

1804: Future President Franklin Pierce is born—the first of the century. Lewis & Clark begin their expedition of discovery. Gas lighting is patented. New Jersey is the last northern state in the U.S. to abolish slavery (Pennsylvania was the first, sort of, in 1780). The first steam engine to propel itself on wheels, Richard Trevithick’s Pen-y-darren, begins operation in South Wales.

BY A BLOW TO THE HEAD

The first recorded murder after the formation of Crawford County occurs in 1805, in Meadville, at Samuel Lord’s store on Center Street. Lord is an original white settler, speaks the languages used by the region’s Native Americans, and his store caters to them.

On the porch of the small log building, a native man, said to be under the influence of strong drink, kills his wife by a blow to the head with a hatchet or tomahawk.

It is common practice to allow for two systems of justice for serious transgressions: one for natives and the other for settlers. It is likely this crime is taken under consideration by native authorities since there is no record of the perpetrator’s trial, sentence, or punishment.

1805: Thomas Jefferson is back in office—a little more cleanly this time. Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific. In an effort to stop pirating along the African Mediterranean coast, the U.S. Marines attack the Libyan city of Derna—it’s the origin of the shores of Tripoli in the Marine’s Hymn.

1806: Noah Webster publishes his first American English Dictionary. The first U.S. Federal Highway is authorized to be built between Cumberland, Pennsylvania and St. Louis, Missouri.

1807: The first steamship in the U.S., Robert Fulton’s Clermont, sails. He owns the patent to prove it. Robert E. Lee is born. Congress passes laws forbidding the importation of slaves into any U.S. port. More than a quarter-million slaves are imported over the next five decades. Former President Judge Alexander Addison dies. Future President Judge Walter H. Lowrie is born.

1808: Future President Andrew Johnson is born. So is future President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis.

1809: James Madison is President of the United States. Future President, Abraham Lincoln is born. The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the Federal Government has more authority than the states. The electric arc lamp is invented. Wayne Township is created from Mead. Future President Judge Samuel P. Johnson is born.

1810: The tin can begins containing food. The can opener comes along a few years later. Napoleon is still causing lots of trouble for a lot of people. The first Oktoberfest is held in Munich to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. He is a womanizer. She ends up the mother of nine. Crawford County’s population increases 163% to 6,178. Bloomfield Township is created from Oil Creek.

1811: The New Madrid earthquake, in the Midwest United States, is so powerful it forces the Mississippi River to reverse course for a short while. Future President Judge Gaylord Church is born.

1812: Louisiana gains statehood. New Madrid rocks and rolls—again. The United States is in another dust-up with England. This time it’s the U.S. that declares war. Future President Judge Rasselas Brown is born.

1813: Perry wins the Battle of Lake Erie. We have met the enemy and they are ours! In 1970, cartoonist Walt Kelly twists those immortal words for a poster with Pogo the ‘Possum proclaiming the first Earth Day: We have met the enemy and he is us!

1814: Napoleon is exiled to St. Elba. It takes eight hours to make the first photograph via camera obscura. The British burn the White House.

1815: Meadville’s Allegheny College is founded by Reverend Timothy Alden. Francis Scott Key combines his poem The Defense of Fort McHenry with the hard-to-sing music of the popular British song To Anacreon in Heaven and publishes The Star-Spangled Banner. Not until 1931 is Key’s song adopted as the National Anthem of the United States. (An interesting side note: The Anacreon guy of the original song was an ancient Greek famed for love poems and drinking songs. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave was, originally, And, besides, I’ll instruct you like me, to entwine / the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine. A bawdy drinking song is the tune of the U.S. National Anthem.) The U.S. and British governments sign a treaty that ends the War of 1812. One week later, Major General Andrew Jackson wins fame with a victory in a war already ended.

1816: Indiana gains statehood. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is established in Philadelphia.

1817: James Monroe is President of the United States. Mississippi gains statehood. The Rush-Bagot treaty, between the British and U.S., limits the number of warships allowed on the Great Lakes. Future President Judge John Galbraith is admitted to the bar.

IT’S DIFFERENT THAN IT USED TO BE

At its start, Crawford County was a true wilderness. You know: cutting down old-growth forests to clear land for crops, building log structures, killing your dinner. The county was formed less than a generation after the American Revolution, and a decade past the Whiskey Rebellion during which Federal troops were sent to quell western Pennsylvania’s violent protests against the government’s taxation of booze.

The county’s population grew more rapidly as the true frontier of the United States moved westward into Ohio. Crawford County’s 1800 census counted slightly more than 2,300 (white) people. Twenty years later, the number had nearly quadrupled. But travel remained slow and dangerous well into the late 1800s. People of all ages carried weapons of all sorts as a matter of course, and with good reason. Robbery and other forms of personal violence were common across the sparsely populated landscape.

THE SHERIFF SHOULD DO HIS OWN WORK

On February 6, 1817, world traveler George Speth Van Holland, late of Canada and recently released from the Franklin Jail, Venango County (fornication and horse thievery) appears at the cabin of Daniel Carlin in what would become Rome Township in the far east-central portion of Crawford County. In conversation, he asks if those nearby are doing well. Carlin’s wife allows that her daughter and son-in-law, the Hugh Fitzpatricks, are better off than most, considering they’ve been settled for only seven years.

Upon hearing this happy news, Van Holland heads north to the Fitzpatrick homestead, near where Spartansburg would someday be. Timing his arrival for sunset, he asks the family’s permission to stay the night. Not an unusual request for the time, especially during cold winter weather. He is happily taken in by the young couple who have a new baby daughter, though