Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/381

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��jealousy of Mr. Brown. Broadwell, in order to make his manly form symmetrical, wore a very tight belt, which proved the cause of his death. The two met one day on the pavement, when an explosion took place, and Brown struck Broad- well with a cane on the tight belt, causing the rupture of a blood-vessel, and death followed.

Brown was tried and sentenced to the peni- tentiary, but, after serving out part of his sen- tence, was pardoned, and disappeared from this vicinit}-.

In 1851 or 1852, John Welch was convicted of killing his wife. It was proved on the trial that he threw her into a well ; the jur^' found a ver- dict of murder in the first degree and Welch was sentenced to be hanged. A motion for a new trial, however, prevailed, but the case was put off for some reason from year to j'ear, mean- while the prisoner lying in jail. Befoi'e the case could again be brought to trial, the pris- oner died in jail. The murder occurred in Jackson Township.

One of the most terrible of the earl}' mur- derers lived in Planktown, a small village, at present within the limits of Cass Township.

The name of one of its citizens, about and before the year 1850, was Return J. M. Ward. It is a well-remembered name by the older cit- izens. This Ward was a tailor by trade, but seems to have engaged in keeping a hotel called the Eagle House, in Planktown. Just when he came or where he came from has not been ascertained, and matters little. He was a liv- ing personification of the ogi'es of the fairy tales — being a large, broad-shouldered man, bald, with a little ring of black, wir}- hair around his head ; thick neck, broad, high, fore- head ; clean shaven, except a large goatee ; and a sinister, forbidding countenance.

Noah Hall was a resident of the town at the same time. He came in 1849, Avas a bachelor, boarded with Ward, and kept a store ; carried a general stock, such as country' stores were compelled to carry in those days. Hall went

��East occasionally to buy goods, and was about making such a trip in March, 1851, when the little village was startled one morning b}' find- ing him dead in his storeroom, where he was in the habit of sleeping. He had been collecting- money for some weeks, which he carried on his person ; but just what amount was not known. Two men, M^ers and McGravy, brothers-in-law. Irishmen by birth, were suspected of being the murderers ; the grand jury found an indictment against them, and they were put on trial for the crime. The evidence was not sufficient and they were acquitted. The real murderer might ha^e been suspected, but was never publicly charged with the crime, and continued to ply his avo- cation and live among the neighbors of the murdered man as if nothing had happened.

Some time after this, a peddler who had stopped at the Eagle House overnight, then kept by R. J. M. Ward and Thomas Griffith, disappeared suddenly and was never afterward heard from ; but as he had no friends, and as Ward had said that he went away early in the morning, nothing was thought of the matter ; it was not investigated, and if anybody sus- pected the peddler had been murdered, they kept their own counsel. Among those who suspected Ward of murdering the peddler, was his (Ward's) wife, who worried over the crime so much that she became insane, and was sent to the asjdum. Ward became so odious in Planktown, that he finally rented the hotel and went away. In Februar}', 1857, R. J. M. Ward was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife (he seems to have married again), at vSyl- vania. a little town west of Toledo. He was convicted of the murder and sentenced to be hanged. His Planktown murders were yet un- known to the public, but when he knew he must be hanged that there was no longer an}- hope of reprieve, he made a confession, of which the following is the substance :

" Of the crime of mui'dering Noah Hall, I alone am guilt3\ On the night of the

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