Ann Arbor Yesterdays ~ From Genesis To Homer

Am Arbor Yesterdays

By Lela Duff

From Genesis to Homer and from Beowulf to Erie Stanley Gardner and our local Henry C. Branson, human beings have frowned upon murder but have enjoyed the tingling of the spine they get from hearing all the gory details—when it doesn’t come too close to home of course. So in the 1880’s, when southern Michigan was no longer a frontier beset with the drama of encounters with wolf and Indian, the county histories began enlivening their drab statistical pages with accounts of foul play.

No exception in this respect, the Washtenaw County History of 1881, sponsored by the Pioneer Society and a list of dignified and estimable gentlemen, after a series of learned papers on Michigan’s geology, ornithology, botany, and legal development, inserts a deliciously lugubrious chapter entitled “Dark Deeds.” Perhaps to take the curse off, the editors chose this otherwise inappropriate place to introduce the portrait of the mild and sweetly-serious Deacon Lorrin Mills, great-great-grandfather of our contemporary Attorney Ross W. Campbell.

Nineteen shocking incidents are recorded, fourteen of them frankly labeled murders, one a "portable murder,” two mere “killings,” and one “shooting,” and one “Diabolical Deed’,’— perhaps “a deed without a name!”

Though a number of deaths occurred during bitter quarrels or less strongly motivated drunken brawls, others were said to be “cool and deliberate” or “in cold blood.” Marital difficulties led to one; to another the avenging rage of a young brother, whose sister had been improperly eloped with. Desire for revenge for a whipping administered by his master prompted a 15-year-old farm hand to a nighttime shooting while the farmer “was asleep by the side of his wife.” Since he “evinced no sorrow for the crime,” this hapless lad was sentenced to prison for life.

The language of the historian leaves nothing to the imagination. I warn any squemish readers to skip the rest of this paragraph. One finds such realism as “shot through the abdomen, wounding the internal viscera”; “a single wound, just over the left temple, a gash about one and a half inches long and cut to the skull. A whisky bottle was lying near”; “the intestines protruded”; “Mr. Shorey struck Mr. Sherman a blow with a stool”; “Knisely struck Bryan with a pocketknife, the blade entering the heart. Strange as it may seem, Bryan walked to the square before death occurred” (the scene of this controversy was near the M. C. depot); “a most distressing accident . . . blowing Hiram’s brains out”; “with fiendish glee he raised the bloody ax and dealt him two more blows, mutilating his head in a fearful manner.” Had enough?

If not, turn to page 236 for "Murder of Richard Flannery,” which beats any barroom fracas in a TV “Western.” The sad part was that “Flannery had not been in the saloon business very long, and was said to have been a quiet and inoffensive man.”

No mysteries followed these murders. The perpetrators were all apprehended immediately. The sentences, however, would furnish material for a Law School thesis. Only one guilty party was sentenced to be hanged, but while arrangements were being completed he broke out of jail and was never heard from again. Two others escaped before being sent to State’s Prison for life, during the year it took the Supreme Court to decide whether they deserved another trial. Nine spent time in the penitentiary, ranging from one to 20 years, a few of them “at hard labor.” One was pardoned by the governor after two or three years. One was found guilty but recommended to the mercy of the court.

When the quarrel had arisen between two men over a woman, the killer got only two years. A scrap over a card game seemed understandable to the jury, for all but the victim were punished by a mere 25-dollar fine. When several were involved in some other kind of row, a small fine was deemed enough for all but one, who was “sent up” for eight years. One who had been cruelly baited by a group of young men “out for fun” was adjudged insane. Only the poor, bitter farm boy and one other were doomed to live out their lives behind bars.