Americana and General Items

[BLACK HISTORY - CRIME] Day-by-day reports regarding a mass murder in a small town of south-central New York State. With expected histrionics, and an unexpected woodcut of the accused man rendered from a drawing done in his Auburn jail cell . . .

ROCHESTER DAILY ADVERTISER (newspaper, Rochester, New York). Five complete issues from March 1846 [New Series XXI]. Folio, [4] pp. each. Disbound with some wear, toning, creases, or clean tears without loss (not affecting the articles described below).

VERY RARE IF NOT UNIQUE: OCLC locates NO HOLDINGS of these five issues in any institutuion.

(Of the smaller Auburn Daily Advertiser, from which several of these articles were taken, only one copy is located by OCLC for the appropriate month, held by the University of Rochester - except for one additional located copy of a March 18, 1846 issue held by the Western Reserve Historical Society.)

— Saturday morning, March 14, 1846: Page 2, column 4. 8½ col. inches of text taken from the Auburn Daily Advertiser, titled, "HORRID MURDER." In the town of Fleming, just south of Auburn, former supervisor John G. Van Ness, his wife, and two-year-old child were stabbed in or near their beds after 9:00 p.m. in their home by an intruder, and "must have died almost instantly. Another man and woman in the house were also stabbed, but survive. The surviving man "describes the murderer as about 5 feet 6 inches high – thick set – and either a negro or disguised as a black man." Horses were stolen, and nearby witnesses heard the commotion and saw someone riding away from the scene. There is great excitement and "every thing is being done to arrest the assassin."

— Monday morning, March 16: Page 2, column 3. 7½ column inches. "Further Particulars of the Murder in Cayuga County. From the Auburn Daily Advertiser." Lurid details (pregnant wife Sarah collapsing to die on a bed after being stabbed; the other stabbed woman running 100 yards with her intestines protruding, etc.). The murderer is identified by the Coroner's Jury as William Freeman, about 21 years of age, a former convict at the Auburn prison. A follow-up blurb at the end announces that Freeman has been arrested in Phoenix, Onondaga County,

. . . and has CONFESSED that he committed the deed!

He also says that he would have killed the WHOLE FAMILY, but from the fact that he wounded himself.

A clean tear into the text of both leaves just touches the article, but without loss.

— Wednesday morning, March 18: Page 2, column 3. 3½ column inches. "Freeman the Murderer." Quoting the Syracuse Daily Star which reports particulars of Freeman's previous crimes, including threatening a young woman's life. He had been imprisoned for horse theft, and once threatened a young woman with a knife. He gave no reason during the confession for the murders of the Van Ness family or the choice of victims, saying only that "the world rolled him there." The funeral was attended by some 3,000 people.

— Monday morning, March 23: Page 2, column 2. 4 column inches. "Freeman the Murderer. From the Auburn Daily Advertiser." Casual reporting of callous gawking once tolerated even in one of the nation's most progressive-minded regions in regard to penal systems - De Tocqueville once interviewed prisoners in Auburn and published his findings to the world with great approval. The local jail, however, was evidently more colloquial . . .

I have just visited his cell. The cells of the jail are of the same construction as those of the State Prison; that is, are of stone and iron, and open into a hall or corridor—and are quite as secure as those of the State Prison. In one of those stood Freeman, in the same dress in which he committed the monstrous butchery, his back to the whitened wall, by which his whole person was strongly relieved [contrasted],—his wounded arm in a sling,—and his right ancle clasped by a massive chain of about two feet in length, riveted to the stone floor.— . . . It is not strange that multitudes of every class and sex, go to the jail to look upon a being in human shape, who has, in this day and region of civilization, been capable of perpetrating acts of such savage atrocity.

The jailer is aggravated (if "not altogether destitute of wit") by all the spectators whom he must accommodate . . .

He had been so much annoyed . . . , that he declared that he would hire some negro to stand chained outside the jail, to personate Freeman, for the people to come and look at. "But, said he, "I am afraid they would Lynch the n[*****]!"

— Tuesday morning, March 24: Page 2, columns 4-5. 6½ col. inches of text, plus WOODCUT PORTRAIT of the accused murderer, entitled, "LIKENESS OF WILLIAM FREEMAN, The Murderer of the Van Nest Family . . . His Life and Character--Incidents of the Murder." The most interesting of the issues, with an engraving from a drawing supplied "our friends of the Cayuga Tocsin."

What became of William Freeman? The following startling sequel is taken here from an Internet summary of the life of William Henry SEWARD (Governor of New York, Senator, and Secretary of State under Lincoln, who gave us, among other things, Alaska) . . .

In 1846 Seward became the center of controversy in his hometown when he defended, in separate cases, two convicts accused of murder. Henry Wyatt, a white man, was charged in the stabbing death of a fellow prison inmate; William Freeman, of African American and Native American ancestry, was accused of breaking into a home and stabbing four people to death. In both cases the defendants were mentally ill and had been severely abused while in prison. Seward, having long been an advocate of prison reform and better treatment for the insane, sought to prevent both men from being executed by using a relatively new defense of insanity. In a case involving mental illness with heavy racial overtones Seward argued, "The color of the prisoner’s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race—the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man."

Later, Seward quoted Freeman’s brother-in-law, praising his eloquence: "They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast; they don’t make anything else of any of our people but brute beasts; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men." In the end both men were convicted. Although Wyatt was executed, Freeman, whose conviction was reversed on Seward's successful appeal to the New York Supreme Court, died in his cell of tuberculosis.

PHELPS AND GORHAM PURCHASE

probably the earliest origin of STEUBEN COUNTY, New York,
as first drafted on the back of a shoemaker's account sheet on the frontier

Local History - New York - Steuben County. [LINDSLEY, Eleazer ?] Born December 7, 1737 at Roxbury, New Jersey; died June 1, 1794 at "Lindsleytown" (i.e., Lindley), Steuben County, New York. Married 1756 to Mary Miller (1738-1806). Among their ten children were Samuel (1760-1805) and Col. Eleazer Lindley (1769-1825) both of whom also died at Lindley township, New York. –information gleaned on ancestry.com

Lindsley was the first representative from Ontario County, New York to the State Assembly in Albany, 1791. At that time, the massive but thinly-populated county included much of the western portion of the state, essentially the Phelps and Gorham Purchase as conceived in the manuscript at hand. Lindsley got himself elected after arranging for Ontario to be represented in Albany, then by gathering a few early settlers to vote for him, without informing settlers further north in Canandaigua or Geneseo of this new seat in the Assembly. Lindsley appeared in the 1790 census in Township 1, 2nd Range as "Eleazer Lindley Esq." He was one of only six heads of families in the entire township, among whom were also "Samuel Lindley" and "Eleazer Lindley, Jr.". –Orsamus Turner, Phelps & Gorham's Purchase, pp. 172, 348, and 479 (for the census); refer also to its 1794 map by Augustus Porter.

MANUSCRIPT DRAFT of "The Petition of us a Number of Freehold Inhabitants of the south part of the County of Ontario State of N York" to ". . . make us a Distinct & Seperate County by the name of _______________ ," begging that . . .

. . . the Boundary of said Intended County may be as follows, Beginning at the 82 Mile stone on the N York & Pennsylvania line. Thence Running North thirty Miles, from thence west to the west boundary of the Preemption - Thence south to the Pennsylvania line from thence East along said line to the place of Begining . . .

This defines the approximate extent of present-day Steuben County, which was created from Ontario County on March 18, 1796.

Lindley township? (on the Pennsylvania line, south of Painted Post), New York, spring of 1794?

$350

The manuscript is comprised of one leaf approx. 9 X 7¾ inches (written on one side), plus a small portion of a conjugate leaf, most of which is torn away and no longer present. The full text of the draft is therefore not present, nor do any names appear as potential signers. This was clearly used as scratch paper, written on the verso of a page of miscellaneous accounting dated March 14, 1793, showing sundry goods received in exchange for shoemaking. In a small, faint hand, written in one corner, is the apparent signature, "E. Lindsley." In a corner of the manuscript petition draft's lower left margin is a note: "1794 Eleazer [?]uly."

At the head of the petition draft are scribbled a few notes relating to the Nativity of Jesus, perhaps for some frontier Christmas observance more than two centuries ago ("of great Joy & shone angels fear not said he bring to you & all mankind Lord came down & glory . . . Seizd their troubled mind glad Tidings," etc.) There is no other dating or name identification on this manuscript. While I have no means of determining who actually wrote the various texts, they are surely related to Eleazer Lindsley and the earliest beginnings of Steuben County, New York. Inasmuch as Eleazer (Sr.) died June 1, 1794, I presume that this document was either written in the spring, or else finished by friends or family near that time.

The petitioners give their reasons for the hopeful county division . . .

viewing with great concern the unhappy situation they are in with respect to the great distance in which they are situated from the Courts of Justice - It being near Eighty Miles for a considerable number of the inhabitant [sic] of the south part [of] said county to attend . . . notwithstanding which the county is most agreeably situated for a division & subdivision comprehending 14 town from south to north & seven from east to west . . . We your Humble Petitioners, beg your Honours would take us under your most serious consideration . . .

FRENCH LEGAL DOCUMENT dated Tuesday, July 16, 1591.

Two sheets of vellum folded to form [8] pp., each measuring approx. 12¼ X 10 inches. Seven full pages of text, plus three separate early dockets or notes on the back blank outer page. Very good; the leaves supple and strong; a bit of moderate staining but presentable, and still tied with the apparent original vellum cord strip. A small, fairly unobtrusive hole (perfectly round) appears to have been punched through the extreme upper left margin in modern times (through which a ca. nineteenth-century green ribbon is now tied).

$350

Begins: A tous ceulx qui ces pr[esen]tes lettres viseront [To all those who shall inspect these letters . . .]

On final page of text: a VilleFoyn [?] . . . Le Mardy, siezeiesme [sic ?] jour de Juilliet mil cinq cens quatre vingts onze . . . [at Villefoyn (?) . . . Tuesday, the sixteenth day of July, one thousand five hundred ninety-one; also docketed on the back in an early hand with date "1591."]

A sturdy and fairly attractive document written in a large and clear hand. I have studied this three times over recent years. Though nearly fluent in French of this period, however, I cannot read enough of the handwriting to decipher the place or names (conceivably one Raymond Delaborde, but don't depend on it). I find even the signature at the end unreadable. It appears to stipulate benefits, and mentions a wife. Written during the tenuous early part of the reign of Henry IV, pragmatic champion of Protestant rights.