Embarrassed wife has Oakland’s first doctor executed
It’s been said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Such fury cost Oakland its first doctor. When Dr. John Conn stepped off the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train in 1851, he was a pioneer. Oakland hadn’t yet been incorporated as a town and the region was still frontier for Maryland. The town only had a few hundred citizens and they needed a doctor. The next-closest doctor was Dr. John H. Patterson in Grantsville. To get there and back to Oakland would have taken a full day. Conn set up his office at Second and Oak streets where it quickly flourished. “In the days before the convenience of a well-stocked pharmacy, it was said that the ‘young doctor’ either had on hand the correct medication, or could prescribe a suitable home remedy for any attack of ague or Read more…
Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 3)
On October 27, 1874, John Resley, son of the clerk of the circuit court of Allegany County, shot and killed Lloyd Clary, the editor of the Cumberland Daily Times and a Confederate Civil War hero. It appeared to be an open-and-shut case. After all, Resley had confessed to the shooting. However, just as a battle plan becomes obsolete as soon as the enemy is engaged, so too, go jury trials once the judge calls the court to order. Resley’s murder trial began on January 29, 1874, barely three months after the murder. The importance of the case became clear when Maryland Governor William Pinkney Whyte sent the state’s attorney general Andrew Syester to assist Allegany County State’s Attorney William Reed with the prosecution. The defense had four lawyers. Col. Charles Marshall of Baltimore was the lead attorney and James M. Schley, J. Read more…
Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 2)
They say, “The pen is mightier than the sword” and for Lloyd Clary that indeed proved true. The young newspaper editor of the Cumberland Daily Times had survived the bullets and swords of the Civil War only to be felled because of something he wrote on October 27, 1873. “Never in our experience have we been called upon to publish the details of an occurrence more truly painful and shocking than that of the killing of Lloyd Lowndes Clary, the brave editor of the Cumberland Daily Times by John H. Resley…” the Hagerstown Mail reported after the murder. It was in the offices of the newspaper on Oct. 27 that John Resley shot Clary twice, once in the neck and once in the body. The neck shot would kill Clary later that evening. Though Resley left the scene of his crime, he Read more…
Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 1)
Note: This is the first of three posts about the murder of Lloyd Clary. Lloyd Clary of Frostburg was the managing editor of the Cumberland Daily Times. He, along with John Broydrick, also owned the newspaper, which was a merging of the Mountain City Times and the Cumberland Times and Civilian. On October 27, 1873, Clary wrote an article critical of how the long-time Clerk of the Circuit Court of Allegany County Horace Resley paid jurors. “The talesmen from Lonaconing were paid $8.50 each; those from Frostburg $4.00 (the Clerk taking the trouble to tell them in Court to go down to the office and get their certificates), while those from Mount Savage and the country districts were allowed to go without being paid at all, and without receiving any intimation from anybody that anything was due them,” Clary wrote Read more…
REVIEW: The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins
I bought The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars awhile back. It finally worked its way to the top of my “to read” pile. I wish I had read it sooner because I really liked it. The main story involves the identification of a dismembered corpse. Once the body is identified as William Guldensuppe, which leads to two suspects, Augusta Knack, Guldensuppe’s lover, and Martin Thorn, Knack’s lover. However, it is much harder for the police to figure out which of the two suspects committed the murder and whether the other was a willing participant or a dupe. While the pursuit of the murderer makes an interesting story in itself, the secondary story of how the newspapers played up the story to the point of actually becoming part of Read more…
1790: Was the Snider family massacred on Catoctin Mountain?
Jacob Snider, one of the early settlers in the area, owned 25 acres west of Owens Creek Campground on Catoctin Mountain that he obtained in 1770. The parcel, called “Snider’s Gardens” was “at a bounded white oak standing on the North side of a branch that runs into Owens Creek, about 20 perches (330 feet) from said creek,” according to the land deed. Further west, a settlement was established near the mouth of the Conococheague Creek. It could be reached from the Thurmont area by traveling the Monocacy Indian Path. The path ran from Wrightsville, Pa., to the Shenandoah Valley. “Like most frontier outposts, the Conococheague Settlement was an occasional target for Indian raids. On one such occasion, a raiding party of Susquehannas captured a young Scotchman named Peter Williamson, and forced him to carry their loot. He later escaped, Read more…
1924: Cop killer attempts prison escape, caught and executed
Philip Hartman knew he needed to pay for his crime and that he would have to pay the ultimate price. “Fight the case? No, I am guilty of the charges. I made my mistake. I am sorry,” the 24-year-old Hartman told reporters after he was arrested for murder and bank robbery. After robbing the Abbottstown State Bank on October 14, 1924, Hartman had shot Private Francis Haley of the Pennsylvania State Police shortly thereafter. Haley had died almost instantly on the highway where he had fallen from his motorcycle, becoming the 11th state trooper to die in the line of duty. Following an intensive two-day manhunt, Hartman surrendered to police in Reading and was returned to the Adams County Jail to await his trial. Hartman spoke to reporters, “In broken phrases, like a man repenting a wrong deed, struggling in Read more…
1924: Pennsylvania state trooper murdered in Adams County
This is the first in a series of articles I wrote for the Gettysburg Times about the murder of Pennsylvania State Trooper Francis Haley and the hunt for his killer. With just five months with the Pennsylvania State Police and only two days at the substation in Chambersburg, Private Francis Haley could still feel a sense of newness and wonder with the job. It was a feeling he would lose all too soon. Around 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1924, the report came in to be on the lookout for a lone man in a touring car with New York plates who was wanted as a suspect in the robbery of the Abbottstown State Bank. Upon fleeing the scene, the bank robber had last been seen heading in the direction of Gettysburg along Lincoln Highway. Around 2 p.m. that day, Read more…
Embarrassed wife has Oakland’s first doctor executed
It’s been said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Such fury cost Oakland its first doctor. When Dr. John Conn stepped off the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train in 1851, he was a pioneer. Oakland hadn’t yet been incorporated as a town and the region was still frontier for Maryland. The town only had a few hundred citizens and they needed a doctor. The next-closest doctor was Dr. John H. Patterson in Grantsville. To get there and back to Oakland would have taken a full day. Conn set up his office at Second and Oak streets where it quickly flourished. “In the days before the convenience of a well-stocked pharmacy, it was said that the ‘young doctor’ either had on hand the correct medication, or could prescribe a suitable home remedy for any attack of ague or Read more…
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