Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/380

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

��CHAPTER XXXVII.

A CHAPTER OF TRAGEDIES.

Murder at Millsborouoh — .John Welch Kills Hls Wife — The Bowlanw-Barker Affair — A Negro Killed — Return J. M. Ward — The Murder of Hall and the Peddler — Ward's Confession — ^The Stein- grater Murder — Killing of Mock by Pool — Murder of Mrs. Lunsford — A Boy Kills His Brother — Murder of William S. Finney — The Killing of Alfred Palm — How Mansfield Treated Her Thieves and Blacklegs.

��RICHLAND COUNTY has not been free from murders and crimes of every de- scription, and though it is an unpleasant task to record these and equally unpleasant, perhaps, to read them, yet they are matters of record, and fall properly within the province of the historian. They will be hastily reviewed with- out regard to minutiae, and are collected into a chapter, that those who care not to read of these things may pass on.

In an early day, the frontier was infested (as it is to-day) with a class of " roughs " and crim- inals, who had perhaps escaped the clutches of the law in the older settlements and come to the wilds of the West for greater safety. This fact, together with the fact that whisky was in general use in those days, rendered the border rather unsafe ; fighting was frequent and killing occasional. The taking of life in this way was not alwaj'S, indeed seldom, considered as mur- der. A few only of the most prominent of these crimes are here considered. One of the earliest murders occurring in the county, caused by whisky, was that of Samuel Crispin, who killed a man named Lintholm in a drunken brawl in Millsborough, in Springfield Township. Crispin, who was a powerful man, struck Lin- tholm with his fist, killing him almost instantly. Crispin was cleared.

The Bowland-Barker affair occurred about 1846. People generally were surprised when Robert Bowland stepped up to Frank Barker

��on the street, in the broad light of day, and stabbed him to death, though, to the immediate friends of the parties, it was not, perhaps, unex- pected. The trouble grew out of remarks con- tinually made by Barker derogator}' to the character of Bowland's wife. The two men were brothers-in-law, young, and full of the fire of life. It was a premeditated murder, for Bow- land put a dagger in his pocket before leaving home, and started out in quest of his victim, while yet his brain was in a whirl of passion, and when in this condition the deed was done. He found Barker talking to a friend on the street, and stepping up to him he touched him on the shoulder to call his attention, and, with- out a word, plunged the fatal dagger into his heart.

He was found guilty of murder in the first degi'ee and sentenced to be hanged, but the sen- tence was commuted to imprisonment for life, and, after a few years in the penitentiary, he was pardoned. He went West and there died.

In 1848, a murder was committed in front of the North American Hotel. The troul)le origin- ated with two colored employes of the hotel — cause, jealousy. A mulatto, named Broadwell, loved the wife of John Brown, not wiselv but too well ; and, if the latter did not premeditate murder, he at least sought revenge. Broad- well was rather a stylish darke}', better look- ing, perhaps, than Brown, which fact served to increase the admiration of Mrs. Brown and the

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