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_ American Agriculturist, September 13,; 1924 
A Rural Tragedy of the Long Ago 
A Folk-Lore Story Where Justice Was Not Leaden-Footed 
I SUPPOSE that I first ought to confess that I 
suffer from one very pronounced “weakness” 
—viz., a sometimes irresistible desire to haunt 
old, decaying cemeteries and to read all 
wayside markers and to do homage at any place 
that by any stretch of courtesy can be called an 
“historic shrine.” My family recognize this 
weakness and deplore it so that if we are motoring 
they make haste to call my attention to some 
other feature of the landscape if a neglected burial 
plot appears within exploring distance. I frankly 
confess that a ruinous old family burying-ground, 
with fallen and only half legible stones, and with 
the lilacs and myrtle and old tea-rose bushes 
cropped by vagrant cows, is for me far more in¬ 
teresting than most movies. I have, however, 
small desire to wander in great city cemeteries 
with their beautiful mausoleums and the “storied 
urn and animated bust” that speak of pomp and 
power. But give me the spot 
“Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap 
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep” 
There is no place like it for musing and dreams and 
memories. 
By JARED VAN WAGENEN, Jr. 
doubt if there are anywhere finer ballad lines 
than the closing stanza of Hood’s 
“And that same night when gentle sleep 
The urchin eye lids kissed 
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn 
Through the driving rain and mist 
And Eugene Aram walked between 
With gyves upon his wrist” 
Of Huddlestone I know nothing beyond the fact 
that he was a man of some standing and position 
and the deputy sheriff of the County of Schoharie. 
John van Alstyne was the proprietor of a good 
farm some four miles distant—not a notably 
bad man perhaps, but one of violent and uncon- ■ 
trolled temper. He had run over and injured a 
child, had been sued for damage and judgment 
had been taken against him. A few days before 
the crime, while trading in the Lawyersville general 
store, he had vehemently declared with a sound¬ 
ing oath, “I will never pay it”—a statement 
that was remembered against him at the trial. 
On the morning of October 9, Huddlestone in 
his capacity as sheriff started for van Alstyne’s 
on horseback to collect this judgment and if 
It is a great library of biography, too, for all about necessary to levy upon property to satisfy it. 
you, you may read the short, con¬ 
cise, stern records which consti¬ 
tute absolutely everything which 
is known concerning the forgotten 
folk that lie beneath. 
Possibly it is in recognition 
of my peculiar weakness that I 
am the recipient of a public 
office which, while it may be 
perfectly “honorable,” is surely 
in no way “lucrative,” for I am 
the Secretary and Treasurer of 
the Lawyersville cemetery which 
lies close behind the old Reformed 
Dutch Church and the folk who 
are quietly resting there make up 
a very much more numerous com¬ 
pany than could possibly be gath¬ 
ered within the walls of the sanc¬ 
tuary for any occasion. Compared 
with them, those of us who are 
still hurrying and worrying about our little busi¬ 
nesses seem very few indeed. 
And close to the western line and hard by the 
plot where my people lie and wait, is set up a 
marble slab which always recalls a crime which 
something more than a century ago unspeakably 
shocked and aroused the people of Schoharie 
County and more especially of this hamlet in 
which the victim was a resident. The slab of 
which I speak has stood there now for a hundred 
and six years, but the marble is of good quality, for 
you may still trace sharp and distinct the hour¬ 
glass crossed with the scythe and below it the 
inscription that this stone was set up by “Moral¬ 
ity Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in memory 
of William Huddlestone, Esq., who was assassi¬ 
nated while in the discharge of his official duties, 
Oct. 9, 1818.” ‘ • 
And because Huddlestone was at the time a 
resident in a house standing on this farm—a house 
that burned down within my memory and the 
cellar hole of which is to-day covered by a farm 
tenant house—and because my father as a boy 
heard all these tales from his grandmother who 
was of course very familiar with these events, 
I have felt that I would like to set down more 
fully than has yet been done the miserable, 
sordid, tragic story. 
I do not claim to point a moral. I only know 
that always men have delighted to rehearse such 
happenings and that in more primitive times they 
have become the theme of song and story. 
For example, there was Eugene Aram, the 
gentle and scholarly schoolmaster of Lynn, 
England, whose crime has been made the theme of 
a romance by Bulwer-Lytton and also of a most 
remarkable ballad poem by Thomas Hood. I 
‘There is no place like it for musing and dreams and memories. 
He was never again seen alive. The two men 
conferred at the barn instead of the house. 
Just exactly what transpired can of course never 
be known. In any event, van Alstyne. losing all 
control of himself, caught up the heavy oak bar 
or pin used to keep shut the big barn doors and 
with it clubbed to death the older and probably 
less vigorous man. He was then immediately 
confronted with the problem which must have 
troubled every murderer of all time—the disposal 
of the evidences of his crime. There were no 
witnesses, so he concealed the horse in a swamp 
and buried the body in a field that had recently 
been sown with winter wheat and then harrowed 
the field (some say by night) to hide the exact 
spot where the earth had been disturbed. Within 
a day or two the alarm of his disappearance had 
been given and the whole countryside w 7 as 
aroused. Doubtless in that primitive time an 
occurrence of this kind caused even more public 
excitement than now. Everywhere men left the 
oxen in the stall and the plow in the furrow and 
gathered to the farm. Every bit of circum¬ 
stantial evidence pointed in just one direction. 
It was of course knowm whither Huddlestone was 
bound and the nature of his errand. Several 
people had seen him riding west, but no one ever 
saw him after he reached the farm. When ques¬ 
tioned, van Alstyne, unabashed, replied that he had 
paid the judgment in cash and doubtless the 
sheriff had run aw r ay with the money—perhaps the 
most ingenious answer that could have been 
devised. Men then asked him why he had re¬ 
harrowed a sown field. Some w 7 ay suspicion 
centered upon that wdieat field—a southern hill 
slope that my father has pointed out to me when 
I was a little lad. A large company of men 
provided themselves with small sharp-pointed 
iron rods and went over the field systematically, 
jabbing the rods into every square foot of soil. 
It was our neighbor Dana who felt his rod pass 
easily downward through the freshly dug soil 
until it w T as cushioned against the body. Then 
in the eyes of the law the case was complete, for it is 
an ancient principle of the law 7 that no man 
can be convicted of murder unless there shall 
first be produced the body of his victim. 
Never was a more satisfactory chain of cir¬ 
cumstantial evidence built up. Beneath the barn 
was found the bloody club with the hair of the 
dead man still clinging to it. Bur ed in the hay 
was found the warrant for the execution still with¬ 
out the sheriff’s signature, although the defendant 
asserted that he had satisfied it by a cash pay¬ 
ment. A sheepskin that Huddlestone used be¬ 
neath his saddle was found concealed under a log. 
Meanwhile between the time when suspic’on 
became practically certain and the warrant 
for his arrest, van Alstyne fled the community in 
an effort to escape to Canada and was actually on 
board a lake vessel and apparently safe, but 
after sailing an unusual gale compelled the boat to 
return and seek safety, too, in the harbor and a 
passenger w r ith a wandering newspaper containing 
an account of the crime caused his arrest. At 
the trial the prosecuting attorney 
made much of the fact that the 
very elements by act of God had 
conspired that the guilty one 
might not escape. 
Apparently Justice if not more 
blind was at least less leaden¬ 
footed than now 7 . He was 
brought back to jail at Schoharie 
and four months later brought to 
trial, ably defended by the best 
legal talent of the time and with 
all the constitutional safeguards 
and privileges which our juris¬ 
prudence accords to the accused. 
Some seventy-five witnesses w 7 ere 
called, but the entire trial lasted 
only nineteen hours and a jury of 
his peers, “twelve good men and 
true, ” quickly brought in a ver¬ 
dict of guilty. Doubtless, to-day, 
the trial would have dragged through many 
weary w 7 eeks, w r ould have cost the county many 
thousands of dollars and the chances are that the 
defense w 7 ould have been able to have hired some 
smart experts to have testified that the defendant 
suffered from “brainstorm” or some “passion 
complex” and finally w 7 ould have flimflammed an 
honest farm jury to bring in some sort of a verdict 
that in a few years would permit him to again 
endanger the w 7 orld. Four weeks to a day follow¬ 
ing the trial he was properly hanged on the top 
of the hill behind the Court House at Schoharie 
in the presence of a vast gathering of people who 
came from far and near s to make of it a Roman 
Holiday. 
We now do things better than that, for our 
executions take place in the presence of only the 
official witnesses of the State and they are for¬ 
bidden to give any details beyond the fact that 
the sentence w 7 as duly carried out—a provision 
frequently evaded but one wffiich more and more 
the better class of newspapers are coming to obey. 
There are just tw r o other episodes of which I 
wish to speak. One of them I had from my father, 
who had it from the lips of his grandmother, who 
w 7 as of course near neighbor to the Huddlestones. 
After van Alstyne’s arrest, the way to Scho¬ 
harie jail lay past the home of his victim. Then 
it was that Mrs. Huddlestone, the widow, came 
out to the road and halted the little procession 
and as only a fearfully wronged, distrait and half 
crazed woman could, she tongue-lashed him and 
cursed him—he and his and his children born and 
unborn until the guilty man cow ered before her 
tincl the others shuddered at her unbridled speech. 
The other incident is a far happier and more 
(Continued on page 180 ) 
