dhanners623 Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 (edited) Went back into the archives to rewrite another one, and it’s another true story from my part of East Central Illinois — the 1845 hanging of Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed. She was the first woman executed in Illinois. Reed was convicted of killing her husband, Leonard, by poisoning him with arsenic. They lived in Purgatory Swamp, just south of Palestine. (Palestine is about a 40-minute drive southeast of my hometown.) She was tried at Lawrenceville, and that’s where she was hanged. It is a case filled with odd footnotes and peculiarities. One of the key points is that some reliable estimates put the crowd at her hanging at nearly 20,000. It was covered by papers far and wide. Keep in mind that at that time, that part of Illinois was still largely frontier; Chicago (a couple of hundred miles to the north) had a population of around 5,000 or so. But hangings were big events, and Betsey had generated a lot of interest. They had invited a minister to speak before the hanging and I imagine he looked out at the crowd and figured he was never going to get an audience that big again, so he preached for 90 minutes. Fast forward to a few years ago and a local author wrote an “historical fiction” novel about her case. The local historical society invited him to speak at one of their meetings and were so aghast at all his embellishments (and outright historical inaccuracies) that they decided to launch an actual historical review of the case. They dug through court records and genealogies and other records and came up with an intriguing possibility: Betsey was innocent. Among the things they found was that Leonard had been sickly for some time, and a doctor had prescribed him antimony. As we know now, antimony is toxic — and the effects of its toxicity mimic (you guessed it) arsenic poisoning. A local ghost-hunter group claims Betsey’s ghost haunts an end zone of the local high school’s football field; that is where her gallows were built. (One note on the song: The Embarras is a tributary of the Wabash that runs by Lawrenceville. It is pronounced, AM-braw.) Betsey Reed © 2024 by David Hanners They built the gallows near a sugar maple grove How many come to watch ain’t nobody knows The condemned waited atop her own coffin Her gown white as Egyptian cotton They claim she killed her husband, a horrible crime Down at Purgatory Swamp, south of Palestine Judge Wilson’s gavel like thunder rang Said justice demands Betsey Reed hang Women cursed her, children strained to see A men’s chorus sang, “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” Some preacher rambled on a full hour and a half For Betsey Reed, one hell of an epitaph I’ve heard folks say maybe she was innocent Sentenced to die on not much evidence Night before the hanging I swear that I saw Betsey being baptized in the Embarras Purgatory Swamp is gone, today it is farmland Sculpted by time and the Wabash There’s still a question years ain’t laid to rest Did they hang a woman who was innocent? Women cursed her, children strained to see A men’s chorus sang, “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” Some preacher rambled on a full hour and a half For Betsey Reed, one hell of an epitaph Edited January 18 by dhanners623 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 333 Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 Terrific. I really like the chorus on this one. Red 333 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted January 19 Author Share Posted January 19 7 hours ago, Red 333 said: Terrific. I really like the chorus on this one. Red 333 Thanks! I so rarely do choruses (something I need to work on) and this chorus just fell into place. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 Pretty slick there, David. I dig the story songs, have only written a few but have many decades of experience........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanners623 Posted January 19 Author Share Posted January 19 8 hours ago, Murph said: Pretty slick there, David. I dig the story songs, have only written a few but have many decades of experience........ Oh, story songs are like walking. Just stick one word in front of the other. When you get into the weeds of the Reed case, all the weird factoids are kind of interesting. I made my protagonist an unnamed local. I gave some thought to trying to tell the story from the viewpoint of the minister who spoke at the hanging. He had befriended Reed some weeks before because she said she wanted to become a better Christian. He began visiting her in jail. Betsey said she wanted to be baptized, so the minister talked the sheriff into letting Betsey out — with a deputy as guard — the night before the hanging. They went down to the Embarras that night and he baptized her in the river. Then the next day, he gave his sermon and Betsey sat atop her coffin waiting and shouted “Amen!” at numerous points during his sermon. Another weird point was Betsey was wearing a white “Ascension” gown. In the early 1800s, there was a religious sect (mostly in the Northeastern U.S.) called the Millerites, after their leader, Baptist lay minister William Miller. He claimed his study of the Bible told him the world was going to end in 1843 or 1844. He said it had to end so there could be the second coming of Jesus. While Miller wasn’t specific about a date, one of his followers was. He did some biblical computations and determined the world would end Oct. 22, 1844, and the idea caught on among the Millerites. Followers were told to be ready. Some dug graves on their property and spent the night of Oct. 22 in them, waiting for the end to come. There are even reports of some families dying by murder-suicide, figuring they’d just get the death part out of the way so they could be resurrected sooner. One enterprising businessman decided that the well-dressed Millerite awaiting the end of the world should be wearing pure white garments, so he produced them and sold them as “Ascension gowns.” Oct. 23 rolled around and the world was still there. It became known as the “Great Disappointment” (seriously) and aside from having to return to their normal lives, one guy had a big inventory of unsold “Ascension gowns” on his hands. He started selling them cheap, and the sheriff in Lawrenceville thought he’d buy a few for when he had female prisoners. So the gown Betsey wore when she was executed had originally been made for people waiting for the end of the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.