Re: Names, DATES and LOCATIONS
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In reply to:
Re: Names, DATES and LOCATIONS
10/30/01
I just found the following in the "History of Cecil County, Maryland" (1881) by George Johnston. It is a footnote in a section relating to the Stone Graveyard at Lewisville, PA (on the MD border).
"A tombstone in this graveyard contains this inscription: "In memory of Hugh Mahaffey, who was murdered November 18th, 1747." He lived in New Munster, on the west side of Big Elk Creek, about a mile south of where the road from Fair Hill to Newark crosses that stream, and was a blacksmith. Tradition saith that a person who lived with him became enamored of his wife, and that he and she entered into a plot to kill him, which they executed in this wise: While Mahaffey and wife were seated near the fire, early in the evening, the cowardly murderer, who had been momentarily absent from the room, stealthily entered it and struck Mahaffey with an axe. The blow knocked him senseless to the floor, but did not kill him. An apprentice boy, who was in bed in the loft of the house, heard the noise, and coming down stairs, the guilty pair compelled him to dispatch his master, threatening, if he refused, to do it themselves and charge him with it and have him hanged. The body was then buried in the smith shop, where, after the lapse of some weeks, it was found, in this way: Some of the friends of the murdered man, who resided at some distance, hearing of his disappearance, came to assist his neighbors in removing the mystery that enshourded it, and hitched one of their horses in the shop near where the corpse of the murdered man was buried. The horse, knowing by instinct that something was buried there, or being impatient of restraint and wishing to get loose, pawed the earth away from the corpse, which of course was discovered. No record of the trial is now extant, but tradition says that the guilty man escaped, that the equally guilty woman and boy were tried for the murder, and that the boy was hanged."