David Kimmel - Outrage in Ohio: A Rural Murder, Lynching, and Mystery

I would like to thank staff members at the following institutions: Mercer County Recorders office, Mercer County Clerk of Courts office, Mercer County District Library, Shanes Crossing Historical Society, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds, Baltzer Meyer Historical Society, Ohio Genealogical Society Library, Holmes County Recorders office, Fairfield County District Library, and Beeghly Library at Heidelberg University. The following people contributed to my work by sharing information and access to artifacts: Helen Almendinger, Lew and Barb Boggs, Sharon Schaadt Cowen, Karen Feasby, Harrison Frech, Carl Kimmel, Tim Kimmel, Mary Krugh, and Tom Pryer; please forgive me if I have forgotten anyone! Heidelberg University Colleagues helped me with writing the dialect for my French, German, and Irish neighbors: Robert Berg, Nainsi Houston, and Marc OReilly. Heidelberg University colleagues Kate Bradie and Ruth Wahlstrom read an earlier version of the book for me, and my wife, Sandy Kimmel, has proofread it again and again. This work was partially supported by sabbatical leaves and summer grants from Heidelberg University.

DAVID KIMMEL is Professor of English at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. He is the great-great-great grandson of Henry Kimmel.

Mr. Gabriel Lockart, a merchant in Shanes Crossings, a little town thirteen miles South of Van Wert, in Mercer county, has given us the following particulars of one of the most revolting outrages ever perpetrated:

On Sunday last, a little girl named Secar, who lived with a family near Shanes Crossings, attended Sunday School and Church, as was her custom. She had not returned to her home on Monday morning, but the family were not alarmed, believing that she had stayed over night with some of the neighbors. At noon search was made for her, and failing to learn her whereabouts, the alarm was given and the neighbors were called together. Some twelve or fifteen men went to the Church and traced her to a point where the road passes through the woods, with a large space without a house. The last that could be heard of her was that a family living near this place saw her about half past twelve, on Sunday, on her way home. A search was made in the fields and woods along this road. Near a clump of bushes two pieces of her hat were found, and one of the men, who was attracted by the noise of some hogs in the bushes, walked around to the side where the hogs were and found them fighting over the little girls body which they were devouring.

Figure 1.1. Title page of James H. Days Lynched! Ohio History Connection.

I was working in the garden after supper with Anna and little Peck when Charlie ran up to the fence, panting hard.

Theres a girl ate by hogs down the road! he yelled as soon as he caught enough wind to get it out.

Anna and I stopped where we were. What are you talking about? I asked.

Charlie spoke again, slowly and emphatically, with the surety and superiority of a five-year-old who knows something his elders dont. Theres a girl they found the hogs ate. He made a horrible face to emphasize the last words.

I looked at Anna, who mirrored what I assumed was my own puzzled expression.

Its awful, its awful. Come quick! gasped Charlie and broke into tears. I dropped my hoe and crossed the garden to the fence where he stood bawling. I leaned over the wooden rails and lifted him. He was growing heavyI didnt pick him up much anymore, so his weight was a surprise. He clasped me around the neck and, still sobbing, buried his face in my shoulder.

Anna, go fetch Mother, I said, hugging Charlie close to me. She ran down the path and into the back of the house. Charlie continued to cry loudly into my shoulder. Peck sat in the dirt staring at us, his lower lip trembling as he debated whether he should cry, too.

Mother hurried from the house, drawn directly to Charlies cries. Anna, Alice, and Jennie followed her out the door and stood in a little clump at the back of the house. Charlie turned from me and reached for Mother, who pulled him from me and gathered him in, he burying his face in her neck and growing silent, except for a few sobs that continued to shake his frame. Mother patted his back and shushed him as she rocked back and forth. At the sight of Mother, Peck also let loose, so I went to him and picked him up. He was much lighter than his older brother but only that much louder for not understanding why he was crying. We finally got the two of them quieted down, and Charlie wriggled out of his mothers arms to stand independently on the ground before us. Try as she might, though, Mother could get nothing more from him.

She turned to me. Give me Peck, and run on up to the crossroads to see if you can find out whats happened. You girls stay here, she added to the group by the back door.

I followed her directions and was quickly out of the garden, around the side of the house, over the turnstile, and walking down the road. It had been dry for the past few weeks, so thick clouds of dust puffed up as my feet struck the roadway. I entered the tunnel of second-growth woods towering along both sides of the road between our clearing and the crossroads. It was cooler in the shade, but closer, too. Up ahead, the bright evening light illuminated knots of women and men standing at the crossroads.

An empty house stood off to the right, its fields and yards filling with weeds. I waved to the women as I approached, and Johanna Mahoney waved back. Around her was gathered every woman in the neighborhood, it seemed: Arrela Wells, Elizabeth Hengel, Mary and Susan Warner, Abigail and Sophie Harmon from way down on the Township Line Road, and Susannah and Mary May. Even ancient Susan Meizner had emerged from her backset cabin off behind the Hengels lot. Their husbands and older sons stood in a group about fifty feet off, and the children swirled around the crossroads, running and laughing and stirring up dust that glowed orange in the late afternoon light.

The adults werent laughing. I joined the group of women. They looked serious and worried. Have you heard about Mary Secaur? Johanna asked me.

Mary Secaur? I asked. The Sitterlys girl?

The very one, said Johanna. She disappeared on the way home from church, and the men found her in the bushes this afternoon.

Her head was cut off, said Arrela.

And her clothes were gone, said Susannah.

I made a face. I knew what that meant.

Mary Warner spoke in a low voice, more to the road than to the rest of us. I cant imagine how she suffered.

A shudder ran through the group. We were quiet for a moment. I tried to block the thoughts and images that came unbidden to my mind, but then I remembered what Charlie had said.

Charlie said something about...

Hogs, said Johanna.

Horrible, said Susannah.

Awful, said Mary.

Dont surprise me none, came a creaking voice. It was Susan Meizner. I lived here in the woods nigh on thirty years. Nothing no animal or