It’s a sad story. Bradbury Ferguson (1801-1853) a hatter
from Exeter, New Hampshire was my Grandfather’s Great Grandfather. Not much is
known about his origins but it was known that he had a tendency to drink ardent spirits to excess. In the
early hours of the 1st October 1840 in his New Hampshire home after
a night of drinking he shot and mortally wounded his wife, Elizabeth Ann, who
died shortly after. He was arrested and
spent the rest of his life in the New Hampshire State Penitentiary where he
eventually died.
We know a lot about the details of this murder because it
happened at a time when there was a lot of debate in the USA as to whether or
not capital punishment was a deterrent to crime. The entire court case was
published into a book in 1841 and is still in print in a textbook for law
students. This book is also available to
view free online.
In 1837 the New Hampshire State Legislature passed a bill
defining what type of murder required the death penalty (murder in the first
degree) and gave jury members the right to opt out of jury duty if they
conscientiously objected to sentencing someone to death. The ‘anti gallows movement’ was nationwide in
the US at this time. The Reverend Arthur Caverno gave a sermon in New Hampshire
in 1835 calling for the abolition of capital punishment arguing that it was not
a deterrent to crime, innocent people were occasionally mistakenly executed and
it was morally wrong for a Christian to condemn other person to death.
New Hampshire State Penitentiary c.1860
My ancestor’s murder provided a test case for these new
laws. The jury found Bradbury Ferguson guilty of murder in the second degree
and he was sentenced to solitary confinement for 2 years and hard labour in the
State penitentiary for the rest of his natural life.
The deliberations by the prosecution, the defence and the judge
in the court transcript are interesting to read and provide a great summary of
the arguments for and against capital punishment. The arguments seem as
relevant today as they were in 1840.
We can only imagine how this all affected his 6 children.
The two eldest boys John 13 yrs and William 11 yrs were mentioned in the trial
and John was called to give testimony. There had been many years of domestic
violence in this family before that fateful night. Some of the details
mentioned in the court transcript were truly awful. The younger children like George
who was only four at the time probably had no memory of what happened? George’s census forms show differing
birthplaces over the years (Maine, Massachusetts, New York). Even his obituary wrongly
said his birthplace was Boston. Was he hiding his past or was he not told the
full story?
After the trial the children were given new surnames by the
New Hampshire legislature. They all took their mother’s maiden name Frothingham
to protect their privacy and they were found new homes. John, my ancestor, went
straight to boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy nearby. William, George
, Eliza and Ann, and I assume Mary, were shipped off to Gray Maine where most
of them are found living with a farmer named Nathan Foster and his wife Betsey in
the 1850 census.
George Edward Frothingham
George Edward Frothingham (1836-1900) went to Phillips
Andover Academy and later graduated from the University of Michigan eventually becoming
a renown opthamologist in the US based in Detroit.
William Augustus Frothingham (1829-1896) became co-owner of
a shoe manufactory in South Paris Maine, William A. Frothingham & Co. and a leading
businessman and selectman of that town.
John Bradbury Frothingham
John Bradbury Frothingham (1828-1881), my ancestor, was
trained as an engineer. During the American Civil War he enlisted as a major in
Ohio and shortly after was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel , additional
Aide De Camp by General George E Wool whose last act before he retired in 1863
was to quell the ‘draft riots’ in New York City. This was a particularly dark
event in US history as you might know. John was mainly associated with the West
Virginian 6th infantry. There is a lot more of his story yet to be
discovered.
John resigned 5 weeks prior to Robert E Lee’s surrender in
1865. Shortly after the war he was an aid to Congressman James Monroe Ashley
and accompanied him on a couple of visits to Utah to meet Brigham Young (Head of the Morman Church). Ashley
was Chairman of of the House Committee on Territories and Utah was still a
territory then. There is an account of the second visit, hand written by John
Frothingham, which is viewable online.
John was the eldest child who had confronted his father on
the night of his mother’s murder asked him what he had done and went to his
neighbours for help. It was young John’s hunting rifle, loaded for killing
squirrels and rabbits that was used as the murder weapon. It’s not sure how the trauma of this night
affected him but his life was a troubled one. After serving as with distinction as an
officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, He worked as a civil
engineer and lawyer and at one time nominated for appraiser of the Port of New
York. In 1881 he was arrested for intoxication on the streets of Brooklyn and
he died in police cells that same night from disease of the heart induced by alcoholism. He had been estranged from his wife and
daughter (my grandfather’s mother) for a short time before that. My family owns
a letter of reference from a Christian Minister vouching that he ‘is not
addicted to the use of spirituous liquors’. To me illustrating how much his
drinking had become a problem.
New York Times 13 Apr 1881
Of the three daughters Eliza Ann married a farmer Bradbury Whittier
from Gray, Maine, Mary Caroline married a day labourer Thomas Folsom in New
Hampshire, who was killed in the Civil War, and I can find no record of what
happened to Ann Matilda Frothingham.
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