Justice and the Two American Tragedies

Attempt to Forget Life Task of Many Who Were Involved

by Ruth Reynolds

Daily News (New York)

Sunday, July 7, 1935

pp. 42-47

There have been two American Tragedies. Legally, justice triumphed in both—for two youthful lovers were electrocuted after two pregnant girls were found slugged and drowned.

But justice took its toll not only in the lives of the two young men, but in the existence of almost three dozen individuals directly connected with the two cases.

For twenty-nine years the anguish of the aging participants in that first American Tragedy, the murder of 20-year-old Grace Brown by her lover, Chester Gillette, 23, had endured. Countless newspaper stories, a novel, two plays and a movie have kept this crime before the public.

Another love affair culminated in the electrocution last May of 21-year-old Bobby Edwards for the murder of his sweetheart, Freda McKechnie, 26. This case was so like the true-life plot of Theodore Dreiser’s famous novel that by common consent it became the second American Tragedy. And the principals of the first quietly stanched their reopened wounds.

They followed the details of the Edwards case in their local newspapers, silently noting each similarity to the sorrow through which they lived. They wonder whether the parents of Robert Allen Edwards, Freda McKechnie, and Margaret Lee Crain, the other girl in the case, will spend the next thirty years of their lives trying to forget their connection with the new tragedy as the Gillette and Brown families have with the old.

Love and Hate Live On In Hearts of Mothers.

Grace died for love and Chester died for hate. Now Chester’s 76-year-old mother lives for love alone and Grace’s 77-year-old parent lives for hate. Mrs. Gillette’s interest lies in storing up treasures in heaven. Mrs. Brown seeks some of this world’s goods.

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Both fathers are dead. Each of the brothers and sisters of this pair has found a place, more or less comfortable, in a world which does not suspect their connection with either American Tragedy.

* * *

Today Mrs. Frank S. Gillette sits alone, a Bible in her hands, in the small brown tent where she lives on the deserted, wind-swept sand dunes fringing the Pacific near Hueneme, Cal., sixty miles from Los Angeles.

“Seventy-six years old last Mother’s Day,” Mrs. Gillette muses as she looks at the ocean, which her favorite camp chair faces. The deep lines of sorrow and pain in her face soften as she recalls that three of her living children are “good Christians” and that her three young grandchildren will never know their uncle’s fate.

“I am an old woman now and I don’t mind telling you all about myself. But Paul, my only son, must not be dragged through all this again. He made me promise faithfully about a year after Chester died never to talk of it.

“Maybe I am breaking my promise now. I hope not. For Chester’s trouble has had only a good effect on all of us. I am not ashamed for myself. I have never lost a friend because of Chester’s trouble.”

Always a migratory family, the Gillettes move and change their addresses constantly. Although The News has traced the life of each member of the family from the day of Chester’s death until the hour of publication, it does not propose to reveal their whereabouts, nor reveal the married names of the daughters.

Since her husband died in August, 1915, Mrs. Gillette, who now blames herself for neglecting Chester, camps alone somewhere near one of her children every Summer. In the Winter she lives in a small room, supported by her children.

She reads her Bible constantly and goes barefoot by preference. Her poor and shabby tent on the beach at Hueneme, where she now has spent the last two Summers, is opened to the sun and wind during the days.

Strong and hale in appearance, she is happy in this life—her Heaven on Earth.

* * *

Contrast her then with 77-year-old Minerva Babcock Brown, a farm woman stalwart despite her weight of troubles.

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All her life has been given to the unpaid labor of home-making. All her younger days were dedicated to rearing her children well. And when the life of her favorite daughter was tragically ended and the body was laid away in the farm dirt of South Otselic Cemetery in New York’s rolling Chenango hills, Minerva Brown knew she couldn’t stop—she had to go on. Finally all her children were grown and married and in 1918, after twelve years of constant sorrowing, her life partner, Frank Brown, died

Then, with no money of her own. she wandered from one of her children’s homes to another until she was finally given a permanent place with her daughter and son-in-law, Hazel and Paul, near Smyrna.*

But living with her children had its disadvantages. They pointed out constantly “every one is making money out of that case but you.”

They argued that photographers, newspaper writers, publishers and pamphleteers had reaped a harvest from the sensational trial in Herkimer, N. Y. in November, 1906. They said the author, Dreiser, and his publishers made money some years later when “An American Tragedy” appeared. After that Broadway playwrights and producers profited on the play. Paramount-Publix Corporation scored with its movie. But the Browns, closest to the tragedy, received nothing.

Some one who had seen the motion picture, “An American Tragedy,” told Mrs. Brown that she and her family were portrayed as slovenly, illiterate, shiftless white trash, and that if she sued the producers she could receive damages—glean from the harvest of the others.

“She didn’t want to do it, and we had to argue and argue before she would consent to see the picture,” her son-in-law, Paul, explained. “Then I had to take her all the way to New York City to see it.”

Contrast this with Mrs. Gillette and her family. Said Mother Gillette the other day:

“Lucille and Hazel (her children) saw the movie when it was in Los Angeles. They would not let me see it because the mother’s part in it was all wrong.”

The picture broke Minerva Brown’s heart anew. Through Clifford H. Searl and Francis L. McElroy, Syracuse attorneys, she sued for $150,000 damages. The case was settled in her favor in Ithaca for $2,200.†

* Hazel’s husband was not named Paul. Perhaps Mrs. Brown gave a false name on purpose, but this doesn’t seem likely. It’s possible that the reporter, Ruth Reynolds, made a mistake, but she interviewed both Hazel and her husband in person, as well as Mrs. Brown (Minerva, Hazel’s mother), at a time when the three were living together. She probably had Chester Gillette’s brother Paul Gillette in mind. Hazel (Brown) Craft (1891-1956), Grace Brown’s sister, was married to Julian M. Craft (1884-1955), a farmer.† The New York Times and New York Herald Tribune (on November 9, 1934) gave the amount of the settlement as “several thousand dollars.”

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“But it was more trouble than it was worth,” said Hazel. And Paul chimed in. “Yes, she didn’t get a cent of it. And with everybody collecting she should get something.”

Paramount, it seems, went into bankruptcy, and the settlement has not been collectible!

* * *

But where there’s life, or money, there’s hope. When The News reporters visited Mrs. Brown at her son-in-law’s farm on a dirt road out of Smyrna she vanished from the doorway as soon as she learned of their mission and let her daughters and son-in-law explain her monetary losses.

Urged to let their mother talk for herself they retired to an inner room where their loud arguments could be indistinctly heard. They came back together, without the mother, to report:

“She says she’ll answer any of your questions and let you take a picture for $500.”

Will Mrs. George McKechnie some future day be hoping to make money on her daughter’s tragic tale? Will Mrs. Daniel Edwards some day be saying “Bobby’s trouble has had only a good effect on all of us?”

Thus far, the stories of their children are in almost perfect parallel to those of Mrs. Gillette and Mrs. Brown.

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., were determined that their smart young son, Bobby, should have a better start in life than his parents.

They sent him out of the coal fields, where the senior Edwards worked as a paymaster in a colliery, to Mansfield, Pa. Teachers’ College. And they were delighted to learn that while there he had fallen in love with a soft-voiced, refined, young student, Margaret Lee Crain. They knew that at one time he had been very much interested in the girl next door, Freda McKechnie, daughter of one of the coal workers. They knew too, that she was crazy about him. They didn’t know, of course, that she had submitted to his wishes.

He Wrote Disgraceful Letters; She Kept Them.

Nor could they know that the affair of their impetuous, passionate boy with the slender, blue-eyed student had passed the adolescent point of petting, sped through a marital state without marriage, and had turned to abnormalities and eroticisms.

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Not only did the young coupled indulge in secret and hectic trysts—they began to write to each other about them. Bobby wrote as often as four times a day and Margaret kept his disgraceful letters as he kept hers.

Then he learned that the miner’s daughter was to have a baby—his baby. And Freda, shocked as he, frantic, begged, implored him to marry her.

For days he hesitated to say “Yes.” He wanted to be honorable—but he also wanted to marry Margaret.

Finally he consented. Freda brightened immediately. With pounding heart she busied herself preparing a simple little trousseau. The appointed day neared.

Bobby, almost as sick with indecision as Freda had been with fear and pregnancy, made his plans. He asked Freda to meet him on a street corner in Edwardsville, a suburb of Wilkes-Barre, on the night of July 30, 1934. He suggested a swimming jaunt to Harvey’s Lake, a few miles distant. Freda was happy, gay, until he told her about Margaret. What happened then only he knew. For he blackjacked her that rainy night and left her in the dimpled waters of the lake to drown.

Then Edwards lied. He tried to cover his tracks. His story was that Freda had fainted and struck her head so that she was knocked senseless, and that he neglected to tell the authorities because he was afraid they would not believe him. So many discrepancies were found in his tale, he was forced to change his story many times.

As a result he placed himself in a most unfavorable light with the public as well as with the authorities from the very beginning.

Prosecution Exploited His Love for Margaret.

Moreover, he tried to keep Margaret Crain’s name out of the case. The consequence of this was that the prosecution exploited this angle to prove motive rather than the defense to prove Edwards’ emotional state at the time of the crime.

Bobby’s letters to Margaret Crain, turned over to the prosecution, helped seal his fate. Years earlier, Grace Brown’s pitiful missives to Chester Gillette had an important, perhaps decisive, effect on a jury which brought in a guilty verdict.

Bobby Edwards was executed in the electric chair at Rockview petitionary May 6, 1935.

* * *

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To learn the true story of that first American Tragedy and how completely the second one paralleled it, one must consider Theodore Dreiser’s novel, so named, as a masterpiece of fiction interwoven with facts developed at the Gillette trial in Herkimer—but as fiction, nevertheless.

One must search for names of principals in crumbling, brown newspapers at well-kept libraries. One must pore over thousands of pages of testimony kept by County Clerk Walter Van Wiggeren in the spick and span hall of records next to the Herkimer County courthouse.

One must trace down these names, fully cognizant of the fact that more than half their owners are dead—but plentifully rewarded by the keen memories of those others who say “It seems only yesterday____”

And then one learns ____

That there were three brothers in the Gillette family. One, in whom we are but slightly interested, left his fairly well-to-do family home near Herkimer to go West, where his heirs still live.

Another, named Noah, went to work for a corset manufacturer and married one of the lady corsetieres of the firm, Carolyn Rice, daughter of a Methodist minister of Harrisburg, Pa. Together this pair started a petticoat factory in Cortland, N. Y., and eventually became one of the wealthiest families in the town.

The third brother, Frank, married a girl from Massachusetts, named Louise Rice (apparently no relation to Carolyn).

* * *

Frank and Louise were perfectly suited to each other. Both were considered religious fanatics by their families. They met, of course, through their church interests.

Frank learned the trade of an engraver and the first few years of their married life they lived in many cities all over the country—where he could find work. They were living in Wicks, Mont., when Chester E., their firstborn, arrived on Aug. 9, 1883.

The advent of their ill-starred baby didn’t tie down the Gillettes. Uncle Noah first saw his little nephew in Plainfield, N. J., in 1885. He saw him next in Spokane, Wash., in 1888.

In 1896 Frank and Louise—by this time the parents of Hazel, Paul, and Lucille as well as Chester—joined the Salvation Army at Spokane. Chester was 13.

The parents became such zealous members of the Army they devoted all their time to it. Both of them became captains and for several years moved from post to post in the Northwest.

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In 1901 or thereabouts the family moved to the Hawaiian Islands, where the parents had a Salvation Army appointment. Gillette’s health failed. So after a year they returned to the United States and settled in Zion City, Ill., where Mrs. Gillette taught sixth grade and her husband did carpenter work.

Alexander Dowie* was then at the height of his career in Zion City, preaching his doctrine of redemption after death and self-denial in life. The parents and all of their children—except Chester, who was seldom with them—became devout followers of Dowie and gained a deep religious faith which became the guiding principle of their lives. Gillette revived. The family believed his faith in Dowie’s doctrine saved him. They gave what little they had in worldly goods to the Dowie movement.

Chester seldom came under this benign influence. When he was 14 he left his people, with their consent. For a while he stayed with Spokane relatives. Then he went to Waitsburg (Wash.) Academy. Occasionally he visited his family—he was at Hilo with them, and for a very short while, in Zion City.

He worked on a farm in Oregon. He worked in printing offices in Vancouver and San Francisco. He spent two years at Oberlin (Ohio) College† and he did several years’ work as a brakeman on the Chicago and Northwestern railroad.

It was during these years of knocking about that he developed a premature independence and became the strangely thoughtful youth whose character was to become a world-famed psychological problem. He was, as you can see, more blessed (or cursed) with worldly experience than was Bobby Edwards.

* * *

Early in 1902 his 50-year old Uncle Noah, prompted by a generous heart and a spendthrift wife, asked the lad if he wouldn’t like to work a Summer in the Cortland factory at $10 a week. Chester jumped at the chance.

He met all his Eastern relatives for the first time—and what a different world they lived in than the one to which he had become accustomed.

Energetic Aunt Carolyn cut a wide swath with the money earned in the booming factory. She was insistent that her two children, Dorothy, then 18, and Harold, then 21, be social successes—although she didn’t mind using Dorothy as a petticoat model when the need arose.

* John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and faith healer who ministered in Australia and the United States. He founded the city of Zion, Illinois. and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church.† Chester attended (but did not graduate from) Oberlin Academy, a preparatory school that was located on the Oberlin College campus.

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Aunt Carolyn was something of a promotion manager. The folks in Cortland still remember the day she brought out a patriotic petticoat with red, white and blue edging.

Chester met his cousin Leslie—one of the other Western branch of the family—who was also working in the factory. He met second cousin Ella Hoag, a widow, who was factory paymistress, and her lovely 18-year-old daughter Georgia.

But he left his job in November, 1904 to go back to railroading. In July, 1905, his Uncle Noah again asked him to join the factory staff. Again he accepted.

And this time he met Grace Brown, three years his junior.

She was a lovely, tall, slender brunette, daughter of Frank and Minerva Brown of South Otselic, N. Y.

The Brown family were almost as old as they hills they had farmed for generations. And when Frank Brown wed Minerva Babcock, also of good farm stock, they asked no more of God than fertility. If they had good land and they had good children one would care for the other.

Their prayers were heard. Their lands were good and by 1905 their living children numbered eight. Ada was married. The others were at home.

Grace, their favorite, born March 14, 1886, was the restless one. She hated the farm. Please, could she go to Cortland to work? She was sure she could find employment in the Gillette skirt factory. She could stay with Ada, who was living in Cortland with her new husband. Please … please … please. Finally in November, 1904 (a week after Chester had returned to the Midwest), her parents consented.

On his return, eight months later, he became the foreman of department in which she inspected materials.

Their Romance Was Fast and Furious.

The romance was fast and furious. At first, in the Fall of 1905 he called on Billy, as her friends nicknamed her, at her sister’s* house.

‘Ere the visit was ended he was begging her for something a little better than mere friendship. Grace was frightened … tantalized … delighted … but she said no. His pleadings and his passion grew. And Grace, like Freda McKechnie, found herself yielding gladly to his caresses.

* * *

* Ada (Brown) Hawley.

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“We heard about that girl,” says Chester’s mother today with a trace of bitterness in her voice, “long before Chester got into trouble. The men at the factory where she was working were all talking about her, saying she was going to be fired because she could not do her work when Chester was around. She was looking at him all the time. Later, when he went out with her, it may have been that she tempted him too much. I do not know.

“A thought which keeps coming to me and which I cannot answer is that maybe it was because his father and I were away from him that Chester got into trouble—into bad company when he ran round with boys in the streets,” she reminisced sadly.

That Chester and Grace couldn’t stay away from each other was true.

Some of the girls who worked at tables near Grace—Ellen Melvin, Neva Wilcox, and Theresa L. Dillion—giggled and told Chester any one would think his work was laid out at Grace’s table. But Theresa Harnisfeger, the forelady, complained that his work was suffering.

In vain his cousin Harold warned him about “going around with that factory girl.” But Chester couldn’t resist her even after her sister left Cortland and Grace roomed and boarded at Olive and Carrie Wheeler’s.*

Finally his passion died a natural death—even as did Bobby Edwards’. Bobby’s affections turned to another girl, but Chester’s turned to many. His realization was sudden that there were many lovely girls about him in and out of the factory—Georgia Hoag, Josephine Patrick, Gladys Westcott, Harriet Benedict, Grace Hill, etc.

And like any young man who has just successfully (he believes) terminated an easy affair, Chester plunged into the gayeties of the Normal School crowd. Although he didn’t live with his uncle, but at Lizzie Crain’s boarding house, as Noah Gillette’s nephew he was naturally welcome in Cortland’s “best set.”

Grace Brown watched and bit her lips and fumbled in her work and tried hard to see through her tears.

And suddenly she knew the worst had happened—she was going to have a baby—Chester’s baby. In a way she was glad, for this must certainly bring the lad back to her. But her joy was short lived.

* * *

In May, 1906, she told Chester—and her heart froze.

First he suggested going to Dr. Sangee† at Little York Lake “to do something about it.”

* Carrie Wheeler was Grace’s landlady. Olive Wheeler was her daughter.† Dr. Ellis M. Santee. His name is misspelled here.

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When she refused, he suggested that she go home for a week—get a rest. Don’t tell your folks. We’ll find a way out. Marry you? Sure, sure, I’ll marry you. But I can’t right now. Don’t worry.

Don’t worry? She was sick—sick with the fear that her folks would find out, sick with the fear that Chester was running out on her, sick with the fear of pregnancy, and just plain sick.

And in the Spring days which followed after she returned to South Otselic she haunted the village post office where Fred Gardner presided. She poured her heart out to Chester in beautiful, poignant letters which he kept but answered only occasionally.

Here, of course, that first American Tragedy differs from the second. Freda wrote Bobby no letters to show the writhings of a soul in torture. And Bobby’s letters to Margaret are too filthy for publication.

If you read Grace Brown’s letters which follow, you will know, better than any author has even been able to portray, the inner thoughts of a deserted sweetheart.

* * *

Thought He’d Be Happy After She Went Home.

South Otselic, June 11th, 1906.

My Dear Boy—I am nearly ready for bed, but I will write you a few lines. I had such a tiresome journey that I am about sick. The roads are nearly impassable, the horses went down yesterday, so I will stay all night with my sister.* She lives about half way between here and Cincinnatus. I coughed all the way there and was ill at night. She had a phone and the first thing this morning Mrs. Hawley’s doctor phoned up to say that the dearest little girl came to Mrs. Hawley’s last night. We were so happy we could hardly eat any breakfast; we did not do a thing all the forenoon only to phone.

She brought me up to South Otselic and we got home about 2 o’clock. Mamma is at Mrs. Hawley’s and I am a little bit lonesome. We had guests here all day and I have engagements for every day and evening until next Tuesday.

I am as lonesome for you—oh! as I thought I’d be. I don’t believe you even miss me. I did not think all the folks would be so glad to see me. They ate me up and if you ever have thought I was spoiled, Dear, I don’t know what you will think of me when I get back. You or any one else won’t be able to do anything with me.

* Ada (Brown) Hawley.

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I do wish I could hear from you in the morning. One of the girls that was here last night was recently married, and if you could have heard her tell of the first dinner she prepared I don’t believe you would have been alive now. I shall be awfully glad to see you, Dear, and just as soon as you get this I want you to write and tell me, Dear, that you can come up Tuesday night. Of course I could stay until a week from Sat., but I want to go to the club public. You let me have my way this time, Dear, and I won’t ever ask for my way again. I hope you are satisfied and having what you call a good time. now that that you have succeed in making me leave Cort–– for a time.

It makes me feel badly, Dear, to think that you think I didn’t know why you wanted me to come home. I know I may be awful green, but as you say, “I ain’t no fool.” I am tired and blue tonight, Dear, and please don’t be cross when you read this letter.

Please write me a long cheery letter and tell me about how you have not thought of me once or missed me at all and how you don’t want to have me come back, and how you can’t possibly come up until a week from Sat. night, if I don’t come back. I don’t mean the horrid things I write, but I am so blue and tired, and have coughed so much all day. You can’t read this, for I am in bed writing. Now please don’t forget about writing, Dear, and please don’t be cross.

Yours, BILLY.

* * *

“Tell Me You Will Come for Me.”

South Otselic, June 19th, 1906.

Monday Night.

My dear, I have often heard the saying, “It never rains but it pours,” but I never knew what it meant until today. About the first person I saw at the station was Mr. Wilcox.* He was hunting a job at Brewer’s so came in to say good-by. When I got to Cincinnatus and just as we were starting for home, I heard my sister was very ill. When we reached her house, I sent my trunks and the carriage home and here I am. The house was full of friends and relatives, crying and talking in little groups. I have a new niece, but the doctor has given up all hopes of my sister being up and strong for a year at least. To put the finishing touches on everything, my brother came in and informed me that Papa and Mamma had decided to go away somewhere for the whole Summer and take me with them, and that they intended to start a week from Saturday and make their first visit at Uncle Charles,† in Hamilton. Dear, what shall we do? I am just about

* A fellow worker at the skirt factory in Cortland.† Charles Babcock, Grace Brown’s uncle.

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crazy tonight. You will have to come for me before then. I could go up there first and you come before they do.

I get so lonesome, Dear. You won’t miss me as much on account of your work, but, oh, Dear, please write and tell me you will come for me before a week from Saturday.

I will come straight back to C____ if you don’t come before then. …

Pease write often, Dear, and tell me you will come for me before Papa makes me tell the whole affair or they find it out for themselves. I just can't rest one single minute until I hear from you. This is a horrid letter, but I can’t write a better one. I am so blue.

Lovingly yours,

G. M. B.

* * *

“I Have Trusted You More Than Any One Else.”

South Otselic, June 21st, 1906.

Wednesday Night.

My Dear Chester—I am just ready for bed and am so ill I cannot help writing to you. I never came down this morning until nearly 8 o’clock and I fainted about 10 o’clock and stayed in bed until nearly noon. This P. M. my brother brought me a letter from one of the girls and after I read the letter I fainted again.

Chester, I came home because I thought I could trust you. I don’t think now I will be here after next Friday. This girl wrote me that you seemed to be having an awfully good time and she guessed my coming home had done you good and you had not seemed so cheerful in weeks. She also said you spent most of your time with that detestable Grace Hill.

Now, Chester, she does not know I dislike Miss Hill, and so did not write that because she knew it would make me feel badly, but just because she didn’t think. I should have known, Chester, that you did not care for me. But somehow I have trusted you more than any one else. Whenever the other girls would say hateful things to me of you I could not believe them.

You told me—even promised me—you would have nothing to do with her while I was gone.

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Papa was frightened today and insists on having a doctor up in the morning. I presume you won't think you can come for me when I ask you to. Chester, if I could only die. I know how you feel about the affair and I wish for your sake you need not to be troubled. If I die I hope then you can be happy. I hope I can die. The doctor says I will, and then you can do just as you like. I am not the least bit offended at you, only I am a little blue tonight and feel this way …

I couldn’t hear one half you said yesterday. How I wish you were here. I am curled up in my sister’s window seat and dreaming of you. The rain has been coming down in torrents all morning, but the sun is shining now. I was in bed at 8 o’clock last night and came down at 6 this morning. Dear, I am afraid you will think I am awfully spoiled when you see me again. I wish every one did not allow me to have my own way so much.

Chester, I do want you to have a good time now and I won’t be cross. I think when I see you, Dear, I shall be so glad I can’t live. I hope you will be glad to see me. Go where you want to, and don’t be angry with me. I want you tonight and I am so blue.

Lovingly,

` THE KID.

P. S.—Write often, please.

* * *

“You Consider Me Something Troublesome.”

South Otselic, June 23rd, 1906.

Friday Night.

My Dear Chester—I was glad to hear from you and surprised as well. I thought you would rather have my letters affectionate, but yours were so business-like I have come to the conclusion you wish mine to be that way. I may tell you, though, that I am not a business woman and so presume that these letters will not satisfy you any more than the others did. I would not like to have you think I was not glad to hear from you, for I was very glad, but it was not the kind of letter I had hoped to get from you.

I think, pardon me, that I understand my position and that it is rather unnecessary for you to be so frightfully frank in making me see it. I can see my position as keenly as any one, I think. You say you are surprised, but that you thought I would be discouraged. I don’t see why I should not be discouraged. What words have I had from you since I came home to encourage

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me?

You tell me not to worry and think less about how I feel and have a good time. Don't you think if you were me you would worry? And as for thinking less about how I feel, when one is ill all the time, some days not able to get downstairs, one naturally thinks about one’s self and a good time, if one can have a good time, when one is ill and stays in one’s room dressed in a kimono all the time, I fail to see where the good time comes in.

It is utterly impossible to think of going away with Papa and Mamma, for I can’t do that, and I wouldn’t have them know of this now. If I should go away like that something would happen.

You write me as though I was the one to blame because the girls couldn’t come. I invited them here because I thought I wouldn’t be so lonesome. I am sure I cannot help it because Mamma is away. As to the financial difficulty, I am the one who will be most affected by that. You say “your trip.” Won’t it be your trip as well as mine? I understand how you feel about the affair. You consider me as something troublesome that you are bothered with. You think if it wasn’t for me you could do as you liked all Summer and not be obliged to give up your position there. I see how you feel, but once in a while you make me see these things a great deal more plainly than ever.

I don't suppose you have ever considered how it puts me out of all the good times for the Summer and how I had to give up my position there. I think it is about as bad for me as it is for you, don't you? The girls write me that you are planning another trip for the Fourth of July. They never wrote me how they knew it.

Perhaps you told them. Is that the reason you cannot come before the 7th or 8th?

I think I shall be back the last of this week. I can’t tell yet just when. That depends on when my dresses are done. I won’t interfere with any of your plans. I was ill nearly all day yesterday, and at night the veins in my temples were frightfully swollen. Mamma bathed them in cologne and they are not as bad today. They were swollen because I cry so much. If you care to talk over any plans I shall be glad to see you any evening.

Chester, I don't suppose you will ever know how I regret being all this trouble to you. I know you hate me and I can't blame you one bit. My whole life is ruined and in a measure yours is, too. Of course, it’s worse for me than for you, but the world and you, too, may think I am the one to blame, but somehow I CAN'T just simply CAN'T think I am, Chester. I said NO so many, many times, dear. Of course the world will not know that, but it’s true all the same.

My little sister came up just a minute ago with her hands full of daisies and asked me if I didn’t want my fortune told. I told her I guessed it was pretty well told now. I don’t want you to mind this letter, for I am blue tonight, and get so mad when the girls write things about you. Your letter was nice, and I was glad to get it. I simply feel “out of sorts” tonight.

Lovingly, KID.

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* * *

“Sorry I Sent You A Hateful Letter.”

South Otselic

June 26, 1906.

Monday Night.

Dear Chester—I am much too tired to write a decent letter or even follow the lines but I have been uneasy all day and I can't go to sleep because I am sorry I sent you such a hateful letter this morning, so I am going to write and ask your forgiveness, Dear. I am very sorry, Dear, and I shall never feel quite right until you write and say that you quite forgive me. I was ill and did not realize what I was writing and then this morning Mamma gave my letters to Papa before I was down. I should not have had it posted but it went long before I was awake. I am very tired tonight, Dear. I have been helping Mamma sew today. My sister is making me a new white Peter Pan suit and I do get so tired having it fitted and then there are other things, you know, that make me worried and tired. I never liked to have dresses fitted and now it is ten times worse. Oh! Chester, you will never know how glad I shall be when this worry is all over. I am making myself ill over it. Maybe there is no use to worry but I do and I guess every one does. I am quite brave tonight and I always feel better after I write you, Chester, so I hope you won’t mind my writing you so much.

Where do you suppose we will be two weeks from tonight? I wish you would write and tell me, Dear, all about your coming. I am awfully afraid I can’t go to Hamilton, Chester.

Papa can’t take me and I am nervous about going alone. You see I would have to ride quite a distance before I could take the train and then there is a long wait, and, Chester, I am getting awfully sensitive. If I can’t go up there what shall I do? Do you think it would be wise to come back there? Could you come to De Ruyter and meet me? I have relatives there but perhaps we could arrange it somehow.

I was pleased yesterday morning. You know I have a lot of bed quilts—six, I guess—and I was asking Mamma where they were and saying I wished I had a dozen, when my little sister said: “Just you and some one else won’t need so many.” Of course my face got crimson and the rest of the family roared. Mamma is so nice about fixing my dresses, she has them all up in nice shape.

If I should stay here and anything should happen I would always regret it for your sake.

15

You do not know Papa as well as I and I would not like you to be disgraced here. We have both suffered enough and I would rather go away quietly. In a measure I will suffer the more, but I will not complain if you won’t get cross and will come for me. I must close.

Write me Wednesday night, Dear, and tell me what you think about everything. Let’s not leave all our plans until the last moment, and above, all, please write and say you quite forgive me for that letter I sent this morning. I am very sorry and if I were there I know you would say it would be all o. k. Lovingly,

THE KID.

* * *

“I Have Been About Crazy All Week.”

South Otselic, June 28th, 1906.

My Dear Chester—I wish you could have known how pleased I was to hear from you today. I should have had your letter yesterday morning, but somehow it was late; and, Dear, I never received any letter from you Friday. All the letters I have had from you in the nearly two weeks I have been here is one—just one—and it was written June 21st. I can’t imagine where the others are, and I have written you every day except three. I wonder if you have all of mine. Where do you suppose your letter is? I remember you told me over the ‘phone Friday morning you would write that night, and I thought it strange that I had not received it. I was awfully glad to hear from you today. Chester, I have been about crazy all week and have scarcely been down for two days; but tonight after your letter I really went down to supper. I have been so ill that Mamma came last night and my sister, Mrs. Hawley, and another younger sister. I am so worried, and your letter was so awfully dear. I hope you got my letter asking your forgiveness for that horrid letter I wrote. I was ashamed after Mamma sent the letter, but I couldn’t help it. My brother is a brick; he is so nice to me and gets me everything I want. I think I shall die of joy when I see you, Dear. I will try and not worry so much, and I won't believe the horrid things the girls write.

I am awfully pleased you had such a jolly time at the lake, Dear, and I wish I had been there, too. I am very fond of water, although I can’t swim. I am crying and can’t half write. Guess it’s because my sister is playing her mandolin and singing “Love’s Young Dream.”

Chester, Dear, I hope you will have an awfully nice time the Fourth. Really, Dear, I don't care where you go or who you go with if you only come for me on the 7th. You are so fond of boating and the water why don’t you go on a trip that will take you to some lake? I was cross and ill when I wrote about it before but really I don't mind the least bit and I hope you will do it. Are you working awfully hard? I presume you are as thin as I am. My brother says he never saw me so thin in all his life. He says my eyes are larger than ever but he had to dodge one of my shoes

16

as he said it. They are not so small but that he would have felt one had it hit him …

I have cried so much I am a sight, dear. I don’t look myself. I am thin and my face is so deathly white you would hardly know me.

With lots of love and kisses, from

THE KID.

P. S.—I can’t wait until I see you, Dear, and of course I will worry a little, but will try to be brave.

* * *

“Think Another Week Would Kill Me, Dear.”

South Otselic, July 3, 1906.

Monday Night.

My Dear Chester—I hope you will excuse me if I don’t follow the lines for I am half lying down. Have worked awfully hard today. ... Mother says I am getting to be a splendid cook. What do you think of that?

I can’t help worrying about your letters. Of course when I don’t hear from you I imagine you have gone away. I think another week would kill me, Dear. Thank heaven I don’t always have to live like this. You have no idea how badly I feel. I don’t know what I should do if you did not come Saturday. If I go to Hamilton that will make things a lot easier for us both, but if I go to De Ruyter you will have to come up in the morning unless you wish to stay here all night.

I wish I could go somewhere the 4th, but that is only one of the little crosses, isn’t it, Dear? There will be lots of things harder to get along with than that. I wish, Dear—I do wish you could read some of the letters from the girls. It is no wonder I write blue letters. I don’t believe what they say now, Dear. I wish you could have read one letter giving an account of your trip to the lake. Of course I had received your letter telling me about it so I did not believe the other one but it was so different. Of course you boys all had girls and all that stuff and nonsense. I was awfully glad I had your letter first, though. I hope you will have a nice time the 4th, for you ought to have. I don’t mind staying alone. This is not so very much. I shall be alone all day. Don’t you wish you were going to be here?

Won’t you forgive me? I do so wish I could die. Is it wicked to want to die? My head aches and I am so blue. Oh, dear, if you were only here and would kiss me and tell me not to

17

worry any more I would not mind all this but with no one to talk to and ill all the time, I really believe I will be crazy. I will never be cross again, dear, and I won’t scold and I will try so hard to please you.

Darling, if you would only write and tell me that you would come Saturday, and not to worry. I am crying so I can’t see my lines and will stop. You will never know, Dear, how badly I feel or how much I want you this very minute. With love and kisses,

THE KID.

P. S.—Chester, won’t you please write and post in the morning? Take the letter down to the office.

* * *

“Don’t Want to Wait In Hotel All Day.”

South Otselic, July 6th, 1906.

Thursday Night.

My Dear Chester—If you take the 9:45 train from the Lehigh there, you will get here about 11. I am sorry I could not go to Hamilton, Dear, but Papa and Mamma did not want me to. and there are so many things I have had to work hard for in the last two weeks. They think I am just going out there to DeRuyter for a visit. Now, Dear, when I get there I will go at once to the hotel, and I don’t think I will see any of the people. If I do and they ask me to come to the house, I will say something so they won’t mistrust anything—tell them I have a friend coming from Cortland and that we were to meet there to go to a funeral or wedding at some town further along. Awfully stupid, but we were invited to come and so I had to cut my vacation a little short and go. Will that be O. K., Dear?

Maybe that won’t be just what I will say but don’t worry about anything for I will manage somehow. Only I want you to come in the morning, for I don’t want to wait there in the hotel all day, for if they should see me there all day they would it think funny I did not go to the house.

You must come in the morning, for I have had to make you don’t know how many new plans since your last letter in order to meet you Monday. I dislike waiting until Monday, but now that I have to, I don’t think it anything but fair that you should come up Monday morning. But, Dear, you must see the necessity yourself of getting here and not making me wait. If you dislike the idea of coming Monday morning and can get a train up there Sunday night, you could come up Sunday night and be there to meet me. Perhaps that would be the best way. All I care is that I

18

don’t want to wait there all day or half a day. I think there is a train that leaves the Lehigh at 6 something Sunday night. I do not know what I would do if you were not to come. I am about crazy. I have been bidding good-by to some places today. There are so many nooks and all of them so dear to me. I have lived here nearly all my life.

First I said good-by to the springhouse with its great masses of green moss; then the apple tree where we had our playhouse; then the “beehive,” a cute little house in the orchard and of course all the neighbors that have mended my dresses from a little tot up to save me a thrashing I really deserved.

Oh, dear, you don't realize what all this means to me. I know I shall never see any of them again and Mamma, great Heavens, how I love Mamma! I don't know what I shall do without her. She is never cross and she always helps me so much. Sometimes I think if I could tell Mamma—but I can't. She has trouble enough as it is and I couldn't break her heart like that.

If I come back dead, perhaps, if she doesn’t know, she won't be angry with me. I will never be happy again, Dear. I wish I could die. You will never know what you have made me suffer, Dear. I miss you and want to see you but I wish I could die. I am going to bed now, Dear. Please come and don't make me wait here. If you have made plans for something Sunday you must come up Monday morning.

Please think, Dear, that I had to give up a whole Summer’s pleasure and you surely will be brave enough to give up one evening for me. I shall expect and look for you Monday forenoon.

Heaven bless you until then,

Lovingly and with kisses,

THE KID.

P. S.—Please come up Sunday night, Dear.

* * *

Clad in a new dress, her new black silk coat and a new hat, the work of these impatient weeks, Grace went forth to meet her reluctant bridegroom - to - be. She found him at De Ruyter—he had come up on Sunday night. She evaded her relatives. And finally they were on a train bound for Canastota and Utica.

Signed False Name To Hotel Register.

Grace couldn’t know that her lover had signed a false name to the Tabor House register in De Ruyter, keeping his initials to correspond with the lettering on his suitcase. She couldn’t

19

know that he stayed out of sight behind the station house until the train was just ready to pull out. Then he dashed for it. She didn’t know that while she was sitting alone in one coach—he was making dates in another with two Cortland friends, Josephine Patrick and Gladys Westcott. Grace had agreed when he said they must travel in separate cars—she supposed it was only to avoid being seen together until they were married.

But Chester had plans. And here he was promising to meet Gladys and Josephine on Friday at their camp on Seventh Lake in the Adirondacks—on Friday when he and Grace were supposed to be on their honeymoon!

They spent the night at Martin’s Hotel in Utica and whatever misgivings Grace may have had over Chester’s delay at marrying were swept away by that night in his arms. How could she know that he had signed Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gordon to the register? Nor could she know that head left a package of soiled clothes at Leahy’s laundry in Utica with directions that it be sent to Old Forge the last of the week.

A honeymoon preceding marriage—that would be fun, wouldn’t it, Grace? No, it wouldn’t. But it was what Chester wanted, so Grace agreed.

They took the train 119 miles to Tupper Lake and Chester acted so strangely that Grace burst into tears more than once. Once she was about to confide in Clara Greenwood, a waitress at Meyer Newman’s Alta Cliff Lodge, where they stayed the night, but Chester appeared on the scene and checked her words.

He decided they didn’t like Tupper. What about Big Moose Lake? Oh, all right, but hurry, hurry Chester—every day counts with me now. I’ve only five months left—people can tell.

Oh! If Grace could have known that on his way from Tupper Lake Gillette mailed a postcard to Ella Hoag asking her to send him $5 to Eagle Bay on Fourth Lake.

But she didn’t know—and she just couldn’t help saying to James McAllister, the chap who drove them over the rutted mountain roads from the station to Big Moose Lake:

“Please—please wait for us for I must get the train back to Utica tonight.”

* * *

“I remember just as well,” says McAllister, now a tobacco-chawin’, spittin’ feller of 68, still working around Big Moose. “I drove them on a buckboard. She was slim and pretty but he looked like a Japanese, with deep set eyes. He kept studying a map of the woods all the way. The trial! Yet, they kept me down in Herkimer three weeks—all expenses paid. I had a good time. Wasn’t married then.”

Chester registered at Andrew Morrison’s Glenmore Hotel as “Carl Grahm” and Grace

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Brown. Then he suggested a boat ride on the lake. Robert Morrison rented them a boat and noticed that Chester took his suitcase, his tennis racket, his hat with him. But the girl had left hers in the little room they had taken. She thought he was coming back—he knew she wasn’t.

They rowed leisurely down the lake toward South Bay. Several people, including Mr. and Mrs. Bernard G. Foster, saw them. Their faces were serious.

Hours passed. The sun set behind the blue Adirondacks, templed with pines, that rise from the lapping water’s edge of Big Moose. The station man shifted uneasily from one leg to the other as he waited for the slim girl and dark-eyed boy. But they did not return.

McAllister telephoned up and down the lake, thinking the young couple had stopped at some hotel for a bite to eat. No trace could be found.

And, of course, McAllister couldn’t know that about 7 o’clock that evening of July 11, 1906, a young man with a suitcase, much resembling the one who had rowed off that morning, had inquired the way to Eagle Bay from three passing strangers—Irving Crego of Boonville, Harold Parker of Goshen, and James Hart of Oswego—in the deep pine woods at the other end of the lake. All of them are still alive to tell the tale.

The next morning Robert Morrison found the boat, bottom side up, among some lily pads in only five feet of water. Draped across the upturned keel was a withered bunch of wildflowers pinned in the buttonhole. Floating near-by was a man’s straw hat with the band and lining torn out.

A group in the steamer Zilpha dragged the lake and Frank Crabb, engineer, found the body of the girl who had gone out in the boat. John De Nio, now 55, and still at Big Moose station, carried the body out. Because the girl’s head was bruised as though by an ugly blow, a call was put in for Dr. Isaac Coffin, coroner, of Illion, N. Y. At first the excited lake folk thought that “Grahm” had drowned too and they continued dragging the lake for his body.

* * *

Meanwhile, John Crowley, a young man on the Little Falls (N. Y.) Times, chanced to tell George S. Ward, district attorney, of the accidental drowning up at Big Moose Lake, situated in the northernmost tip of the large Herkimer County.

Ward, with an eye out for a case which might better his political situation, decided he’d go up there and investigate. Before he could get under way he heard that Coffin had determined the dead girl was to become a mother, and that the bruises on her head, despite the water in her lungs, indicated that violence had played a certain part in her death. He too heard about “Carl Grahm.”

On Friday, June 13, District Attorney Ward, Under Sheriff Austin B. Klock, and Deputy

21

Sheriff Granville S. Ingraham started north. By this time they had identified the girl as Grace Brown and were certain her companion had been Chester Gillette.

Arrested, Chester Changed Story Often.

On the train they noticed a man with a Cortland newspaper. He was Albert Gross, youthful superintendent of the factory, on his way north bearing Chester’s postcard to Mrs. Hoag and the requested $5.

Unsuspectingly, Gross told the officers who got into a conversation with him that Gillette was at Eagle Bay. Meanwhile they had a telegraphic tip about the laundry. Ward sent his assistants to Old Forge. He went to Eagle Bay and found Chester at the Arrowhead Hotel, Inlet.

“Chester, do you know that Billy Brown is dead—drowned over here in the lake?” Gross said as he met the youth.

“My God, no!”

“Well, it’s true. And Chester can you give a good account of yourself since last Monday?”

The boy, protesting his innocence, was arrested. He changed his story often. Once he said the boat tipped over. Then he said she committed suicide.

“I remember how I told the Sheriff, ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ ” says A. C. Boshart, former owner of the Arrowhead Inn, who at 89 is now living out his last days in Inlet. His hotel burned down in 1919. “Gillette was so pleasant everyone liked him. and I couldn’t believe a nice chap like that could be guilty.”

* * *

For the next four months Prosecutor Ward busied himself getting together 109 witnesses and an unbreakable case with would eventually make him county judge.

Sheriff John M. Richards found the battered tennis racket with which the prosecution felt sure that Chester killed Grace. (Dreiser says a camera was the weapon.) Richards found the racket in the woods, two miles from the lake, and 100 feet the road, buried in leaves and dirt between Big Moose and Eagle Bay. Gillette insisted he had purchased it in Oberlin years before until authorities learned he bought it in Cortland in 1906 shortly before his “wedding jaunt.”

(Pennsylvania authorities learned that Bobby Edwards purchased his blackjack shortly before he took Freda for her last ride.)

Grace’s letters were discovered. And the prosecution traced down witnesses to reveal

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each of his moods and moves—his infatuation for Grace, his betrayal, his deceptions, his obvious plans for her murder.

But what was his motive stronger than that of trying to evade fatherhood? Ha! The prosecution hit upon it. He must have wanted to marry another girl. Who? Why, Harriet Benedict of course—he had her picture in his pocket.

Now Harriet Benedict was undoubtedly one of the loveliest girls in Cortland. Her father was in politics there, and she was a student at the Normal School. She was 18.

But Chester wasn’t in love with her—and she wasn’t in love with him. They had met frequently at parties where each was a guest. He had taken her out a couple of times.

On July 4—the one Grace mourned so bitterly—Harriet was Chester’s companion at Little York Lake. They had taken some pictures then. That’s how he happened to have one.

She was as good a name for the prosecution to choose as a motive, as any other—and choose her they did.

And to this day, thanks to the ambitious District Attorney and Dreiser’s beautiful society heroine of fiction, Harriet Benedict, now Mrs. E. D. Crane of Cortland,* is called “the other girl” in that first American tragedy.

* * *

Chester’s uncle rallied to his aid, so did his cousin, Dorothy, and his Cortland friends. But Cousin Harold did not go to the trial and Mrs. [Carolyn] Gillette [Noah Gillette’s wife] was loud in her protestation that Chester was no kin of hers.

Uncle Noah gave what money he could for the defense, but his business had taken a turn for the worse and he couldn’t give enough—so the county appointed excellent lawyers, headed by U. S. Senator A. M. Mills, to defend the youth.

On November 12, 1906, the trial began in the 100-year-old courthouse before Judge Irving I. Devendorf. It was, as the five living members of the jury and the few living witnesses will tell, an extremely interesting case. It was Ward’s all the way.

Although Chester’s defense that the girl jumped into the water was ably presented by Senator Mills and Charles D. Thomas—they had the threats in her letters to show her state of mind—they scarcely had a chance.

The state spent $30,000—an astounding sum in that day in any upstate community—rounding up and keeping the witnesses during the twenty-eight days of the trial.

* Harriet’s husband was Levi R. Chase, not “E. D. Crane.”

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A sometimes gruesome, sometimes pathetic collection of relics adorned the courtroom. There was a full length portrait of Grace, which the defense charged was there to arouse sympathy. There was the rowboat, bottom up as it was sighted on the lake, with the strands of the dead girl’s hair still twisted in the oarlocks. There was her cheap tin trunk and there were her letters. Chester, chewing gum, eyed them all calmly.

He Saved Suitcase, Why Not the Girl?

There were the girls at the factory to show his interest in Grace. And there were the girls at the Normal School to show his interest in them and in Harriet Benedict. There were Grace’s folks, and witnesses to trace every step of the wedding journey on which there was no wedding.

There were no eyewitnesses to the crime.

But Marjorie Carey of East, Orange, N. J., a Big Moose vacationist, testified she heard a scream ring over the waters of the lake about 6 P. M. And others testified they saw the pair in South Bay.

There were numerous doctors to say Grace had died from shock or concussion from blows on the head before her body reached the water.

There were plenty of witnesses to trace Chester’s course from the lake and his behavior during the days before his arrest.

To Chester’s story of accidental drowning there was the prosecution’s constant query—why, if he saved his suitcase could he not have also saved the girl? Why if he was a strong swimmer—and he admitted he had learned the sport at Hilo—didn’t he help his drowning sweetheart?

The case went to the jury December 4. Within five hours the verdict was read. Chester showed no emotion.

At the time there were constant comments that the number of women in attendance at the trial was “disgraceful.” But today there are many, many grandmammas in Herkimer who recall proudly that they “never missed a day.”

* * *

Chester’s difficulties had been kept from his family—who had left Zion City for Denver, Colo.—until Aug. 1, when Uncle Noah wrote his brother and told him the sad news. Thereafter Uncle Noah and Mrs. Hoag wrote constantly, giving the family details of the trial.

All during the trial his parents wrote urging Chester to place his trust in God and

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reiterating their faith in his innocence.

On Dec. 1 the family were located by Denver newspapers which heretofore had not connected them with the famous case. Lucille, 15, and Paul, 13, in school regularly, had kept Chester’s trouble strictly to themselves.

The end of the trial came. And the little old man and stout-hearted woman went voluntarily to the office of the Denver Post to get the verdict. He would be freed, they told each other. He was not guilty, they said confidently.

And then the words clicked over the telegraph wires. The operator turned ashen white as he typed them down. For the little old man and the stout-hearted woman were hanging, breathless, over his shoulder to get the happy news. They stared at the words “CHESTER GILLETTE CONVICTED FACES DEATH IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.”

The father said not a word. The mother suddenly dropped her head into folded arms and moaned, her body shaking with dry sobs:

“My God! Oh, God—I have believed in the mercy of God, so long, so long, and now _____”

And in Herkimer, another mother, Mrs. Minerva Brown, was joyfully moving about shaking the hand of each juror in congratulation.

* * *

Mother Gillette sent her boy this wire:

“My own dear boy. God still reigns. Your innocence will be proved. We have sent word that the case be appealed. Keep up your courage. Trust in God. Our trust is there. He will not fail us. We have firm faith in your innocence and wrong shall not prevail. God willing, I shall be at the next trial.”

And Father Gillette received from Chester:

“Dear Father. I am convicted. Will write.”

And a little later the amazing hypocrite answered his mother’s message:

“Dear Mother: Of course I am innocent and am confident as ever. I am of good courage. Have until Thursday morning for an appeal.”

A warm-hearted editor offered to give Mrs. Gillette enough money to visit her son, but she insisted she couldn’t take the money without earning it. So she signed a contract with the

25

editor’s paper to write them stories of her trip East. Then both she and her husband hurried to Chester.

She visited every juror in the hope of getting him to change his mind. She lectured to raise funds for an appeal. She went to Gov. Charles Evans Hughes, now Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. She says herself, she went down on her knees to him. She humbled and debased herself as only a mother can. She failed. Hers is the real American tragedy.

The Gillettes went back West, not to Denver, but to a little mountain homestead near Monarch, Colo. They had been destitute when they first arrived in Denver. Friends and members of their religious sect donated enough furniture for them to set up home in a tent.

Then Father Gillette found employment as a dishwasher for $7 a week and Paul worked as a part-time office boy for $3. They were able to afford the three-room apartment they occupied during the trial. But after they returned to the West they sought solace in an isolated home. Paul went to work in a lumber mill at Frazier, Col.

In January, 1908, Chester’s appeal was heard. It was based on the introduction of the hairs, allegedly those of Grace Brown, found on the side of the boat, and the introduction of the letters. These two things Senator Mills claimed were not material evidence and tended to prejudice the minds of the jurors.

(Remember how bitterly Bobby Edwards’ attorneys fought in the Court of Appeals saying Bobby’s letters to Margaret had no right in the courtroom and prejudiced the jury?)

On Feb. 17, 1908, the Court of Appeals sustained the verdict. Judge Frank H. Hiscock who wrote the opinion, is still alive, and Rush F. Lewis, then District Attorney of Herkimer, succeeding Ward, who opposed the appeal, is Mayor of St. Johnsville, N. Y.

In their mountain homestead the Gillettes received the dread news. Indomitable Mrs. Gillette, still confident in her boy’s innocence, did not collapse. She sent a wire to Chester at Auburn penitentiary which read:

“My heart grieves for you tonight more than I can express, but trust in God and in his own time justice will be meted out to you. The case must go to the Supreme Court as soon as possible. God is not dead if men are blind to what is justice, and I know that your trust will not fail you. Mine is strong in Him who is our fortress and our strong tower. Read the ninety-first psalm and be the man for whom this psalm is written. Its promises will be yours. Your father and Paul unite with me in this message. I am sending a telegram to Hazel. God be with you and make you strong and brave. Lovingly yours

MOTHER.”

She and Paul went East again to plead with the Governor. More than a year later the present Chief Justice said it was the most trying experience of his administration.

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As a matter of fact, he did on the last day call Warden Benham of Auburn penitentiary to stay the boy’s death—and he heard that Chester had confessed to Rev. Henry McIlravy, of Little Falls, N. Y., his spiritual adviser, and Chaplain Cordello Herrick of the prison.* They never told exactly what he said—and for that reason Mr. Gillette, to the day of his death, believed his boy was an innocent victim of a blind justice.

Mother Gillette spent the whole of that last day—March 29, 1908—with her first-born in his prison cell. He did not confess to her. She would never talk of that experience afterward. But she was finally convinced of his guilt.†

She did reveal recently: “We asked Chester before he died if he would rather have life imprisonment or capital punishment and he said he wanted death.”

That night he was electrocuted—the last man to undergo that death at Auburn.

“He seemed to dance in,” recalls John Crowley, now editor of the Little Falls Times, who attended the execution in Ward’s place. “We thought he was doped.”

The next day, in firm, unwearied hand, Mrs. Gillette wrote to the governor:

“I thank you for the time and conscientious consideration you have given my boy’s case, but I wish you could have shown the mercy we will all want when we stand in God’s presence. I want you to know I have no hard feelings toward you or your decision.”

Back home once more she read the letter which Chester had written for her on the last day—

“I want you to feel, Mother, that I am fully prepared to die and that we may meet again some day. I hope I have not made the future too hard for you.”

* * *

The future? Too hard for her?

No, no, Chester—nothing was ever too hard for your mother. Today, in her sand-strewn

* Such a telephone call — on the evening of March 29, 1908, the day before Chester Gillette’s execution — is recounted in Craig Brandon’s book on the Gillette case: Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited. (See Chapter Nine.) Accounts differ, as Brandon notes, as to who — the governor or the warden — made the call. Also, it is clear from Brandon’s account that the governor’s intentions in making the call — including whether he called with the intention (as Ruth Reynolds asserts) of staying the execution — were unknown then or later.† The description here of this visit — on the Sunday before the day of Gillette’s execution — is not completely accurate. Other family members accompanied Mrs. Gillette on that final visit. Mrs. Gillette did talk, at least briefly, about the visit later. The visit did not last the whole day. Mrs. Gillette and the other visitors were not allowed into Gillette’s cell, but had to talk to him through a protective screen. See Craig Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited, Chapter Nine.

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tent she waits patiently for that day when she will meet you again and she smiles and says softly:

“Chester’s trouble has only had a good effect on all of us.

“Paul was only 14 when Chester died. In the two years that Chester was in prison Paul visited his brother many, many times.

“It was through Chester’s influence that at the last Paul became a Christian. Chester became converted a month before he died and the pamphlets and articles he wrote in prison on “Advice to Young Men” and “How to Keep From Going Wrong” had a wonderful influence on Paul. Paul read them all many times and he has them now.

Son’s Fate Wrecked Father Gillette’s Health.

“He is happily married now and is a very successful professional man. Paul told his wife before they were married about Chester, but it has never made any difference in their lives.

“The girls never, to my knowledge, told their husbands about Chester. At least they did not tell them before they were married. Lucille’s marriage ended unhappily four months after the wedding. Maybe it was because she told her husband—I do not know.”

The morale of her three grown children is entirely due to Mother Gillette. Father Gillette was too broken up to work much after Chester died. He left his family in Colorado and went to Houston, Tex., to seek work. He died there of a stomach ailment in 1915.

Paul, now 41, worked his way through a school of mechanics and a State university from which he graduated in 1918. From that time on the worked long and diligently, cared for his mother and sisters when they needed his aid, and is now occupying a responsible position in his chosen profession.

“Both of my girls were kindergarten teachers,” says Mrs. Gillette. “They got their training in Chicago and they went to Zion City to teach. I think Hazel went into kindergarten teaching because she thought it would be a fine thing to teach young children and bring them up along good moral lines so they would not get into trouble.

“Hazel was 20 when Chester died and she was always the most thoughtful one. Lucille was only 16 at the time and I think she took up teaching for something to do. She did not think as much as Hazel and I don’t think Chester’s death had so much effect on her.”

Hazel, now 47, is happily married and is using her kindergarten training to bring up her two children, 7 and 4. Although money isn’t plentiful she and her husband are making a living operating an auto tourist camp in the Southwest.*

Lucille, a short, stocky, graying woman of 43, has had a difficult time of it. Some time after her husband left her, his son, now 9, was born. Lucille named the baby for Paul and said she

* The auto tourist camp was located in Globe, Arizona.

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would never marry again “because I never could find a man as good as my brother.” She’s been working as a housekeeper for $2.50 a week and room and board to support herself and her boy!*

The tragedy never affected the Cortland Gillettes very much. Carolyn Rice Gillette continued giving the parties she couldn’t afford after the petticoat business slumped to a standstill, until her death of pneumonia in 1923. She is still considered the Harry Symes Lehr† of Cortland.

After he death Noah married a pretty young thing of Cortland. An old, old man, he died on his honeymoon in Atlantic City. Dorothy, who felt worse about Chester’s fate than any of the others, is the happily married mother of two in a far-western city. Harold, now in his early forties, is married and comfortably situated in a New England town.

* * *

The Browns, who attended the trial in full force, went back to their hills and have been content to dig their existence out of the soil, working hard to forget their sorrow.

Sweet-faced. brown-eyed Ada lives on a farm near her mother, with her husband and her daughter Grace (the new born babe, now 29 years old. of whom Grace spoke in her letters).‡

Hazel, as we have said before, lives on farm with her husband. They have cared for their mother for fourteen years although they admit that times for them “are pretty bad.”

Ruby is the wife of a well-to-do filling station proprietor in De Ruyter and Frances is married and lives in Syracuse, where Uncle Charlie Babcock also lives. Clayton, the brother, struggles along with a fish business in a central New York town when he isn’t on his farm. Only Mary has gone far from the Chenango hills—she’s married and lives in Detroit.§

The folks who live in South Otselic feel heart-achingly sorry for Mrs. Brown.

“If she gets any money from any one she deserves it, poor soul,” said one old neighbor who, long ago, went to school with “Minervy.”

The Browns suffered another tragedy in March, 1922.

Mrs. Brown’s mother, Belinda Church Babcock, then 90, was burned to death at her grandson’s home in De Ruyter, when her scarf caught fire as she bent over a stove.* Lucille (married name Sternard) and her son Paul were living in San Antonio Township in Los Angeles County, California.† Henry Symes ("Harry") Lehr (1869-1929): an American socialite in New York City during the Gilded Age who was dubbed "America's Court Jester."‡ Ada Brown married Clarence E. Hawley. They lived in Norwich, Chenango County, New York.§ Grace Brown’s sister Ruby Brown married Glenn E. Johnson. Her sister Frances Brown married Earl J. Preston. Her sister Mary Brown married Harold L. Landesman.

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Yes, Minerva has had a hard life. But there’s a place waiting for her in the beautifully kept little cemetery in South Otselic where three headstones say:

Grace M. Brown1886—1906

At Rest

Frank B. Brown 1858—(Apparently there wasn’t money enough to carve the date of his death.)

Minerva B. Brown 1858—

* * *

Time has dealt kindly with Mrs. Chase, the former Miss [Harriet] Benedict. so cruelly labeled “the other girl.” In 1910 she married the Cortland lad who had shuddered when he heard her name linked with the sensational case. Chase is now a Cortland lawyer and the father of Harriet’s three children.*

In more than twenty - five years of their married life—they recently celebrated their silver anniversary—the lawyer hasn’t made much money but they have both made many friends, and they both have been exceedingly happy in their tiny home.

“Oh, please, plesase, let me make it plain that I wasn’t interested in Chester Gillette and he wasn’t interested in me. We went about in the same group of young people and after the trouble, all of us—my dear friends, Josephine Patrick, and Gladys Westcott, and all the rest—were dragged into the case. I don’t know whether he was guilty or not,” Mrs. Chase said, nervously stroking a feather and pushing her black hair off her white forehead, as she talked.

She is an extremely pretty woman, slim, and fine-featured, with eyes that are alternately blue and gray.

The News reporter asked her if she had ever read “An American Tragedy” which portrays her as a society girl deeply in love with the frantic lover.

“No, no, a number of us thought it would be better not to read that book, so I never did,” she explained. She stayed away from the movie, too. When it appeared in Cortland there were numerous complaints written to the theater house manager and to Fred Crook, a character witness for Gillette at the trial and now editor of the Cortland Standard, saying that the revival of the case was unfair to Mrs. Chase.

* Harriet married Levi R. Chase of Cortland, a lawyer.

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* * *

Some of the old crowd—to whom Chester never showed Grace—still live in Cortland. Albert Gross, now happily married and well to do with a home at Little York Lake, heads a farmers’ syndicate there.

“We who covered the trial,” says Crook, “thought Grace jumped in—and then Chester just let her drown.”

The old Gillette house has become a sorority house for Normal School girls—successors to those who turned Chester’s handsome head.

If there were any maledictions heaped upon the heads of the jurors who pronounced the lad guilty, none took effect. Five of the jurors are still living. The others died of peaceful old age. None regrets his verdict.

“No, that fellow certainly was guilty,” reminisces Webster Kast, 73, owner of broad acres at Kast Bridges, N. Y., where his farmer fathers lived before him. “After the trial the boy’s father came around asking us jurors to change our vote. The mother came around, too. Mr. Gillette told me he had the promise of another juror to change his vote if I’d change mine. But I couldn’t do it. If I’d thought the boy was innocent I’d be sitting there yet.”

L. C. (Larry) Barrigan who keeps a cross roads store at Salisbury, N. Y., said: “Yes, I see some of the jurors once in a while. They stop in when they drive past here, just to talk over the case.”

“No, I’m not sorry I changed my vote,” says 80-year-old Herbert T. Dodge, head of a large and prosperous dairy farm at Schuyler. The vote stood 9 to 3 on the second ballot with Dodge, Harvey Freeman and W. L. Thayer holding out.

Ralph Smythe, now 61, the youngest of the jurors, says the trial was mighty interesting. And Mrs. Smythe, still his help-mate on their great farm near Columbia, N. Y., says she can still remember how glad she was to get her man home after 28 days.

* * *

There is no estimating the amount of money made directly and indirectly from the first American Tragedy.

For the first few years after the tragedy numerous sightseers traveled to Big Moose. Although few people go to that lake today because of their morbid curiosity, once there all of them talk of the murder. The Glenmore, larger and modernized, does business under new management.

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Sightseers Interested Still in Murder Scene.

“I took the fellow around the lake in the launch a couple of years ago,” volunteered Steamboat Bill Irvin, 74, of Charles and Fred Williams’ Lake View Lodge, “and before he left he told me he was a cousin of Gillette. The Browns were up here too once, I think. I point out the spot to some one most every trip. Funny, that shore line off where she was murdered is one of the few places on the lake which has never been developed by realtors.”

Dreiser’s book made money. In October, 1926 and in 1931 Broadway audiences paid good prices to see two different legitimate versions of “An American Tragedy” by Horace Liveright and Jules J. Leventhal, respectively. In 1931 the film appeared.

So Mrs. Brown’s folks are absolutely right in saying she is one of the few who has not profited by the tragedy.

“Every one gets something out of it but her,” grumbles her son-in-law. “A fellow was here to get her true story. Said he’d pay a lot—so she wrote it out for him. Then he went off with it. Never paid her and never came back either.”

Well, we’ve called this Justice and the Two American Tragedies—perhaps it should have been named Justice and the Tragedy of All American Tragedies.

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