USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 17
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He made abortive attempts to see Christie. The Warden family saw a bearded face peering in the windows several times during this period. He entered the house four times, staying inside for an hour one night as he brooded over some articles of Christie's clothing he found. Once he opened the door to Christie's bed- room. Seeing that the room was occupied by her brother Johnny, he hastily withdrew without awakening him.
On one occasion, thinking that Christie was staying overnight at the Pettee house, he used a ladder to enter a bedroom window, and badly frightened a Pettee house guest, Miss Amelia Thomp- son, whom he found in bed there. Placing a hand on her throat to prevent any outcry, he warned her not to tell of his visit, for fear of hurting Christie's reputation. He then placed a cartridge in the girl's hand, and told her to think of it if she was tempted to
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talk. Almy's threats had the desired effect. Miss Thompson did not volunteer her testimony until after Christie's death.
The fatal meeting with Christie took place on July 17, a pleas- ant night lighted by a full moon. Almy had heard the women plan during the day to attend a Grange meeting in Hanover that night. At his trial he said, "I felt on this night that my physical condi- tion was weak. I felt too that I must see her that night or not at all."
At twilight, Christie, demurely dressed in white, came out of the farmhouse, accompanied by her mother, her sister Fanny, and a neighbor, Miss Louisa F. Goodell. They walked down the Lyme road toward the village.
As darkness fell, Almy made his way across the fields and down Lyme Road to the village center. He thought that he would meet Christie near the Grange hall. His jealous nature was raised to a murderous pitch when he saw a girl dressed in white, whom he thought to be Christie, strolling along with a young man near the hall. He approached the couple, and placing his hand on the girl's shoulder, growled, "Here, this is a pretty piece of business." The girl, Miss Lottie Kellogg, looked up startled at the strange bearded man. Almy stared at her searchingly for a moment, and then quickly walked away.
He then went down Lyme Road about a mile to a pleasant spot where a brook ran at the bottom of a rolling hill, called Potash Hollow at the Vale of Tempe. Almy stood waiting under a tree near a fence that separated the field from the road. There were a pair of bars which could be taken down for easy entrance. They were lowered on this night.
At 9:15 p.m. the four women who had attended the Grange meeting walked past this spot on the nearly deserted Lyme Road on their way back to the Warden farm. As the group was about to pass his place of concealment, Almy stepped into view. "I want to see you, Christie," he said, taking firm hold of her arm. The women stared at him, momentarily speechless with surprise. Turning to Mrs. Warden, Almy said, "You know me, Mrs. War- den. I'm Frank Almy." Then, turning his attention again to Christie, he said with more fervor than accuracy, "I've come a thousand miles to see you, Christie." To Mrs. Warden, who was becoming understandably agitated at this point, he said, "You go on and I won't hurt you." He tugged at Christie, urging her
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toward the bars. Mrs. Warden begged him not to hurt her daughter.
Fanny seized her sister's other arm "in vain endeavor to wrest her from the villain's clutches." Almy pulled a revolver from his pocket. "I hate you, Fan," he said.
"I know it, but whatever you do, Frank, be a gentleman," Fanny pleaded, hopefully appealing to whatever remained of his better nature.
Their neighbor, Miss Goodell, had already run up the road. Mrs. Warden followed, as Fanny urged her to find some help.
With Fanny still clinging to Christie, Almy dragged both girls toward the bars, until Fanny's feet struck uneven ground. She fell, nearly carrying her sister with her. Grasping Christie around the waist, Almy dragged her over to the lowered bars and pulled her into the field, toward the willows on the far side of the brook. When they reached the brook both fell, and Almy continued dragging Christie by her skirts.
"Frank, let me go. This is outrageous!" Almy at his trial quoted her as saying at this point.
The willows overhung and hid from view a small grassy plot into which the light of the full moon barely penetrated. Fanny, following quickly after the pair, was stopped before reaching this spot by Almy's warning, "Stand back or I'll shoot." Her next ten- tative step forward drew three shots from Almy's revolver, all of which missed her. She then ran back toward the road, screaming for her mother and Miss Goodell to hurry for help. Returning to the hollow, she heard Christie cry, "Help! Fan! He is tearing off my clothes!"
Miss Goodell met a neighboring farmer, Emmett Marshall, who jumped over a stone wall at the edge of the field and advanced toward the willows. Almy fired at him, and Marshall, being un- armed, ran to the village for police assistance.
Fanny again made a move toward the willows. "Go back," Almy warned. There were two more shots. Then silence.
In a short time another man, John Scott, appeared on the scene, and together he and Fanny cautiously walked into the willow grove. Almy was gone. Christie was lying on her back, dead, a pool of blood beside her head. She was stripped of all clothing except a waist, an undergarment, stockings, and one shoe. In addition to the .44-caliber bullet that penetrated her head, one other shot had
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been fired into Christie's body, effectively destroying any evidence of possible rape.
Almy escaped after the murder, back to his hiding place in the barn. Although the greatest manhunt this area has ever seen ranged both sides of the Connecticut River, nobody thought of searching so near the Warden home.
Reporters and curiosity seekers came pouring into town. Every branch and twig was stripped from the willow clump at the mur- der scene, and on the bare white wood hundreds of names were written. The day after the murder, Hanover's business and educa- tional activities came to almost a complete halt, as most of the men searched the region. The town of Hanover and the State of New Hampshire offered rewards for Almy's capture totaling $4,000.
Almy, hidden securely in a den he had cut with a sharp knife in the hay, four by eight feet and covered by about three feet of loose hay, was able to lie at ease on a bed of finely cut hay, soft as a featherbed, and observe the activities around the Warden house through a crack in the side boards of the barn. He watched the funeral procession leave the house. He listened to plans for his capture.
The search dragged on for thirty-one days. The ubiquitous Almy was seen in Montreal; at Derby Line, Newport, and Bellows Falls, Vermont; in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. Meanwhile, Almy lived like a predatory night animal, devoting his days partly to sleep and partly to carving a series of tunnels through the hay in three connecting barns. At night he roamed at will, as the zeal of the search parties evidently did not extend past the twilight hour.
As told in a contemporary newspaper account: "The orchards of the neighborhood, the milk cans of the Warden creamery, the open cellars of the villagers, and the pantries of the professors af- forded him sustenance. At midnight he sat upon the piazza of the Wheelock House and borrowed the current New York Tribune belonging to a guest of the house. From the larders of the people of Hanover he secured food, and a dainty rascal he was. Pickled oysters, wine, the best of canned meats . .. and topped off with a cluster of fruit picked from Andrew Warden's orchard."
Almy made several nocturnal visits to Christie's grave, which necessitated walking near the center of town, but he never was seen. He said at his trial, telling of his first trip, "I threw myself
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down by her grave and thought there were only a few sods be- tween me and Christie. I had no flowers, so I broke some branches from the spruce trees and laid them on her grave. After this I went several times and carried flowers picked in the Warden yard."
His long period of hiding finally came to an end when on Tues- day, August 18, Mrs. Warden went to the barn searching for chickens missing from a newly hatched brood. Under a loose board in the barn floor she found a cache of empty cans, an empty jelly tumbler, empty beer bottles, and a freshly whittled yellow birch club, like a policeman's billy. As a result of this find, Johnny crawled under the barn, where he discovered cans and bottles scattered all about.
County Solicitor William H. Mitchell and Sheriff Silas H. Brig- ham were notified, and ordered a more thorough search on Wednesday, which showed beyond all doubt that someone had very recently been concealed in the barns and stable.
Almy lay hidden in the hay as the search progressed. He later said that on Tuesday afternoon, when he saw Mrs. Warden make her discovery, he realized that his capture was inevitable if he remained in the barn. On Tuesday night he prepared to run away. "I started out and went below West Lebanon. But I could not go away from the place where we had been so happy. I went back to Hanover, and went to the cemetery, where I stopped for a few minutes, after which I went on to Mr. Warden's."
On Wednesday night Prof. G. H. Whitcher of the State Agricul- tural College and H. C. Brown were detailed to watch the prem- ises. Shortly before midnight they concealed themselves in a corn- field south of the Warden farmhouse, separated from it by an orchard. In about an hour a hatless man, poorly clad, and wearing tennis shoes, was seen emerging from the rear of the barn into the moonlight. Cautiously making his way into the orchard, he began picking apples from a tree not ten feet away from the watching men. He then returned at a leisurely pace to the barn.
The two watchers hurried back to town. Forty armed men, re- cruited during the night, started a methodical search of the barn at daybreak. Deciding that more volunteers were needed, the big bell was rung on Dartmouth Hall, as well as church bells in Leb- anon and Norwich. A crowd soon gathered in a large field oppo- site the barn. In the testy words of the Lebanon Free Press, "The curious, the do-nothings, and the fault finders were coming by
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hundreds from all the region." The crowd eventually numbered 2500.
As recalled in a Dartmouth Alumni Magazine article written by Stephen Chase, who was an adolescent at the time: ". .. The sheriff soon arrived and then the argument began as to what should be done. Some hotheads even insisted the building should be set afire. Finally the sheriff mounted a ladder placed against the side of one of the barns and, after haranguing the crowd, called for volunteers to enter each of the connected barns and pitch over the hay where Almy might be hidden. Pitchforks from nearby farms were quickly brought and many volunteers climbed over the several mows of hay."
One of these volunteer groups, consisting of seven men led by Professor Pettee, included Charlie Hewitt, a student at the Agri- cultural School. Hewitt, an acquaintance of Christie's, had known and disliked Almy ever since he began working on the Warden farm. The group climbed a ladder in the middle barn to the hay mow. In one spot the hay had the appearance of having been dis- turbed, and had a spongy quality when stepped on. One of the search party, Joe Lovell, had a spade handle with which he probed this spot.
"I've struck him!" he shouted, probing again, hard. A shot from the hay at his feet proved the truth of his statement. The bullet struck the handle he was holding, and Mr. Lovell, being unarmed, wisely made his retreat. Two more shots came in quick succession as Almy rose like an apparition from the smoking mass of hay.
"Frank Almy! You villain!" Hewitt later quoted himself as crying out at that moment. He attracted the attention of the di- sheveled, straw-sprinkled fugitive, who looked like a deadly scare- crow as he extended his arm to fire at his old acquaintance. Hewitt dodged behind a post and emptied his revolver at Almy, as Almy's return fire whined past his head. Hewitt then made a dive for the ladder, reached the barn floor head first, and landed out of range, unhurt except for a slight wound on his nose. The Free Press added an admiring footnote to its description of this wild shooting spree. "Everybody allows that Charlie Hewitt has sand in him."
The volunteers left the barn at this point, leaving Almy in full possession. They did not know that three of Hewitt's shots had taken effect, one entering the thigh of Almy's left leg, another breaking the bone of the same leg below the knee, and a third creasing his scalp.
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Almy held the crowd at bay for two hours and then, sensing the futility of further resistance, announced that he would give him- self up if he was assured that he would not be lynched. There never has been a lynching in either Vermont or New Hampshire, but he felt with good reason that the crowd might make an ex- ception in his case.
After surrendering his pistols, Almy was taken to the Wheelock House, now the Hanover Inn. After his wounds were dressed, a crowd that filled the street in front of the hotel demanded a closeup view of the murderer. Because of the crowd's ugly temper, its demands were granted, and 1500 people filed past Almy, who lay in his hotel room on a narrow cot. The crowd was persuaded to disperse when Almy fainted.
He was tried and convicted of first degree murder in Plymouth courthouse, and was sentenced to hang. After a long delay, due to legal technicalities, sentence was carried out in Concord State Prison on May 16, 1893. Invitations, printed on black cards, were issued for his hanging, and a special train was run from Hanover to Concord.
In keeping with his life's pattern, Almy's last moment on earth was bungled. As his body shot through the trap, the coil of the hangman's knot became unloosened, giving several inches more rope than had been calculated. His feet struck the pavement. In an instant the sheriffs and officers upon the scaffold seized the rope and drew him into the air. He was unconscious when he struck the pavement, and his heart ceased beating after nine minutes. He died an agnostic.
Although Almy had asked for burial in an unmarked grave within the prison walls, the final disposition of his body remains a mystery. The best guess seems to be that the body was claimed by a relative.
So ended a misspent life, and thanks to the perverse fascination of evil, a legend began.
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I5 Flood, Fire and Wind by Bancroft H. Brown
T HE older inhabitants of Hanover still employ a local vo- cabulary for weather in general, and wind in particular. A heavy snowfall is a "blizzard," although the air may have been absolutely still. The twisting tornado, the tropical hur- ricane, the severe storm are all referred to as "gales." In fact, any wind velocity of more than twenty miles an hour is a "gale." "Gales" in any sense are relatively rare in Hanover; hence they are noticed. If a few trees are blown down, or if a barn is un- roofed, the wind acquires the name "severe gale," and in memory the event assumes the proportions of a catastrophe. The oldest accounts of severe gales sometimes employ such words as "Tor- nadoes," "Hauricanes," and "Tuffons." Tornado, possibly; hurri- cane, yes, once or twice; typhoons, no. All such designations are to be regarded with suspicion.
Hanover is north of the ordinary tornado territory. But three early gales: August 15, 1787, August 19, 1788, and June 13, 1802 were always referred to as tremendous tornadoes. The Hanover accounts of the first two seem to be hopelessly jumbled. There were definitely two gales, almost certainly not tornadoes, but since they were in successive years, memories soon merged them into one. Thus William Dewey, writing from memory in 1847, says:
"About midsummer 1787 or 8 about 6 o'clock P.M. of the third successive day of hard and almost incessant rain a tremendous tornado came in from SSEast with a violence unparalled (sic) here before. ... The roads were filled with fallen trees. We could not pass one mile north of here until more than 40 large trees were cut away in the road next day. . . . " Richardson in his History of Dartmouth College puts this in 1787; but some features of the account better fit the 1788 gale. One thing is certain, the wind blew very hard on both days.
The 1802 gale caused much more damage in the village. Several buildings were blown down, the south end of Dartmouth Hall was unroofed, and William Dewey said that the door of his barn was blown so far that it was never found again. Old New Hampshire
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records have a great deal to say about the 1787 and 1788 gales, but very little about this one; hence it may well have been a small local tornado.
New Englanders never really understood about hurricanes until September 21, 1938. They had experienced, without quite realiz- ing what was going on, two genuine ones on August 15, 1635 and September 23, 1815, and they had known the backlash of many others. But very few believed that a tropical hurricane could travel up to Canada, hitting us on the way. Certainly Hanover had had no such experience. The hurricane of 1815 veered northeast after crossing southern New England, and did not hit the upper Connecticut Valley with destructive force.
The 1938 hurricane was first spotted about September 7. Its possible path was plotted, and ships told to get out of the way. The trouble is, they did. It never occurred to the Weather Bureau to send out a plane to see what the thing was up to, and with ab- solutely no warning it hit Long Island in the early afternoon of September 21. The eye of the hurricane then crossed Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and on into Vermont, leaving New Hamp- shire on the dangerous eastern side.
No one living in Hanover will forget that day. It had rained steadily for four days, and the ground was soaked. By noon there was something in the atmosphere that no one liked. Seasoned travelers said, "Now if we were in the Caribbean, I'd say there was a hurricane coming." And we laughed. New Hampshire isn't the Caribbean. But we were jumpy; we couldn't settle down to anything. The barometer dropped every time you tapped it. You opened the attic door and got a rush of air in the face. The wind blew stronger and stronger. The radio stuttered something about winds of gale force, and then the electricity went off.
Outdoors the elms swayed more and more. They did not break, or crash down; they simply eased down to the ground uplifting a mass of roots and earth. Pine trees, offering more resistance, broke off.
Dartmouth College was due to open the next day. An eighteen- year-old boy, away from home for perhaps the first time, happy and healthy, hails any act of God as a welcome bonanza. One re- calls the excited, cheering groups of freshmen on Main Street that evening when the hurricane was at its height, watching the elms sway, and betting which one would go down next. This is of course
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not all the picture. One also recalls the Dartmouth Outing Club members toiling with axe and saw all that long hurricane night.
The hurricane left a mess, and it was weeks before the mess was cleaned up. In the village the worst damage was to the College Park, which looked like a pile of giant jack-straws. But there were no casualties, no major destruction. And generally, Hanover has been a fortunate town. Floods have never hurt us as they have Hartford, Vermont. We have had fires, but no such fire as the Canaan fire. Sometimes the wind blows; but we have had no tornado like the Claremont one. We have been fortunate.
New England has had many earthquakes, mostly of a minor na- ture. The Hanover records of 1786 tell of a "severe earthquake which all but ruined the wells of water" so that they had to be dug deeper to bring in the flow again. This earthquake was ap- parently not wide-spread, and was "severe" only in its nuisance value. Records of later earthquakes tell of chimneys falling, but the truth is that some chimneys are just on the point of falling anyhow, and such a record is not to be considered evidence of any major destruction. Associated with the minor quake of 1925 there is a rather pleasant story. The quake was on Saturday night, February 28, at 9:22 p.m. A college basketball game was being played at Hanover with Princeton, and it was a close, exciting game. The quake occurred at a crucial moment, near the end of the game, with the score tied, and the partisan Dartmouth stands making a great deal of noise. Few of the spectators noticed the tremor at all, but as one Princeton player put it: "The stands were so excited that it seemed as if the floor went up and down in a wave." It did. (Princeton won.)
In any town where artificial heat is needed from September to June, it must be expected that there will be fires. Leaving modern chemicals out of the picture for the moment, the only effective ways of putting out a fire were to smother it with a blanket, or to douse it with water. The two elements, fire and water, are inter- twined in the history of every town, and they must be considered together.
People who have never experienced the luxury of running water seem to have survived with no serious damage to their dis- positions. Every farm had its well, and there were community wells for the villages. A well doesn't help much when a house catches fire; and prudent householders kept a few pails of water
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always handy in order to douse an incipient blaze. If you didn't get it in time, that was just too bad.
As soon as Dartmouth Hall was built, and the students moved in, every student was required to have on hand by 9:00 p.m. a bucket full of water in case a fire broke out. Some of these buckets, made of leather, have been preserved by the College. The wooden construction of the building, the open fireplaces, and the admittedly casual attitude of students made for a constant threat; and it was mostly by good luck that the Dartmouth Hall fires which started were put out.
The details of one such fire became a Hanover tradition. After Dartmouth Hall was completed, everything was housed in it: li- brary, philosophical apparatus, and museum. A rather serious fire broke out early in 1798. Lord's account runs as follows:
"The different phases of anxiety exhibited by members of the Faculty amused the students so much that reminiscences of it were handed down by tradition almost to the present day. All, of course, rushed breathless to the scene. Professor Smith was calling out to save the library, while Professor Woodward pleaded for the air pump, and the President at the same time shouted to save the zebra." Other accounts substitute "the great bird" for "zebra"; probably President John Wheelock mentioned both, for he was very fond of them. The zebra was the gift of a wealthy shipowner of Salem, Massachusetts, one Elias Hasket Derby. "The great bird" was either a penguin or a flamingo. Books, apparatus, bird, and beast were all removed. One account says the fire was extin- guished by the students largely with the aid of snow. However it was done, it was fortunate, for the optimistic trustees had placed no insurance on the building. The variegated scholastic matériel was returned, somewhat the worse for wear. The zebra's travels were by no means over, and he was often found on the belfry of Dartmouth Hall, or suspended from the ceiling of the chapel. Regrettably, no one knows what ultimately happened to the zebra and the great bird-they are no longer with us.
There were sporadic efforts on the part of the College and the village to improve the water supply, and even to purchase a fire engine; but these things cost money. The village was thrifty; the trustees of the College always found more pressing demands upon the little money at their disposal, and nothing was done.
Finally in 1820 an aqueduct system of running water was in- stalled for the benefit of the townspeople who could afford to par-
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ticipate in it; not for the College. The water came from wells on the south side of Mink Brook, south of the Greensboro district, and nearly three miles from the village. The water was brought to the village by gravity through a lead pipe; but since the elevation of the wells was only about one hundred feet above the village, the pressure was usually inadequate for running water in the house. An underground brick vault or cistern was constructed near the subscriber's house, into which the water flowed. The water was hand-pumped to a tank in the kitchen. Small boys could count on a steady revenue from this pumping; standard rates seem to have been one cent per hundred pump strokes. This system was in partial use until well into the present century.
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