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Hour 09/03

1984 | A Grand Sonnerie: The Chimes of My Life

Chapter 8: East Hill Indiscretions

By Treat Robertson

IT WASN’T UNTIL the leaves began falling in late September that we noticed the glimmer. It was up the hill in the trees, just beyond the barn. I first saw it one late afternoon when the sun had nearly completed its arc across the Catskill sky. “Hey, what is that?” I said. “I have no idea,” said my wife, not looking up from her book. “Up by the pines, I mean. Some kind of reflection. Weird! You see it?” She sighed and inserted a bookmark. “Why don’t we go take a look?”

We had just purchased a house, an American foursquare located on three acres in upstate New York. It was in need of some repair and we, being ambitious first-time homeowners, were busy patching, painting and fixing whatever we could, and managing semi-reliable contractors for the rest of the work. At the time, we were living in a small apartment in Astoria, Queens, freelancing to pay the rent while moonlighting in the creative arts. I was struggling to find a place for my mixed-media art pieces in the city’s inscrutable gallery system, and Madeline was composing complex orchestral works while occasionally getting gigs performing other people’s music. We’d come from Chicago seeking fame and fortune several years earlier and, not surprisingly, were finding those aspirations more easily conceived than achieved. Facing the prospect of another sweltering New York City summer in our second-floor unair-conditioned flat, we decided it might be nice to find a country retreat, a place to get away and find fresh inspiration for our aesthetic endeavors. I’d saved some money from a project I’d done for the Field Museum of Natural History back in the Windy City and, thinking it might be enough for a down payment on a little house, we went looking for an upstate real estate agent.

We found Sophie Paley through The New York Times classifieds. The Sunday paper’s “Homes for Sale” listings were extensive in the 1980s, with many hundreds of offerings categorized by region and all within reasonable driving distance from Manhattan. There were appealing ads for homes in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and Columbia counties, and others for properties in Connecticut and New Jersey. But prices for those houses were invariably more than we could afford – often much more. There was one county, however, that was the exception.

“Hey, look at this!” I said to Madeline one Sunday morning. “A nine-acre horse farm for only eighteen grand! Lots of other affordable listings, too. In Sullivan County, wherever that is.” More than a few of the Sullivan classifieds had been listed by Paley Real Estate of Monticello, NY. We consulted a map, and then made a call on Monday morning. Ms. Paley herself answered, and a few days later we rented a car and drove the two hours up to Monticello to look at properties in New York’s Catskill mountains.

SOPHIE PALEY appeared to be in her mid-70s, a matronly woman whose heavy make-up and teased cloud of silver-white hair gave her the look of a grandmother just in from Las Vegas. She was warm and friendly, but she was also all business. We met at her office in the Monticello Inn, a run-down motel on Broadway, the village’s main drag. She had lined up a number of properties for us to see that were in our price range, and we climbed into her lime green Buick Electra, me in the front seat and Madeline in back, for the tour.

The first house was a single-story, two bedroom cottage set back from the road in an overgrown yard full of brambles and what looked like poison ivy. “This one’s got lots of potential, a real charmer − just use your imagination,” Sophie said. “I’ll get the key.” She went around to the back of the big Buick and popped the trunk. In it was a cardboard box filled with all kinds of house keys, some tagged but most of them loose. Madeline gave me a doubtful look as Sophie rummaged through the box. “Ah, here we go!” she exclaimed after a long moment.

We picked our way carefully through the yard and after fiddling with the lock, entered the “charmer.” The house had clearly been vacant for some time, its air damp and musty. There were mouse droppings on the kitchen counters and both bedrooms had water-stained ceilings over sagging floors. In the living room, cheap wood-grained paneling likely hid abundant cracks in the plaster, and the bathroom had tiles missing from both the floor and shower stall. A big rust spot stained the sink basin, the product of a leaky faucet. “So what do you think?” said the agent. When we were slow to reply, she quickly added, “More project than you were looking for, right? No problem. Just wait till you see the next place!”

That afternoon was a quick lesson in the disconnect between the poetic and the prosaic. We had come to Sullivan County with visions of a quaint country home in sylvan surroundings, a place where we would spend summer afternoons on our rocking chair porch enjoying views of rolling farmland under azure skies – all for a bargain price. After viewing five properties with the indefatigable Ms. Paley, we were beginning to understand that the porch, if there were to be one, would more likely be attached to a seedy mobile home on a weedy back lot with a view of a dilapidated bungalow colony across the road. The prices in Sullivan County were indeed low, but for a reason. Many of the county’s properties were euphemistically described as “needing TLC,” often touted as “perfect for a handyman.” In other words, caveat emptor.

IT WASN’T always so. Sullivan County had been vacationland for the denizens of New York City, starting around the turn of the previous century. The completion of the Erie and Ontario & Western rail lines through the region made the Catskills accessible to millions, and farmers who struggled to make ends meet working the mountains’ rocky approximation of soil began converting their chicken coops and tool sheds into accommodations for the new visitors. Rooming houses quickly followed, and eventually grand hotels featuring deluxe amenities and all manner of entertainment could be found in even the most modest of hamlets. By the 1930s, Sullivan County’s population would triple each summer. There were movie theaters, department stores, hospitality inns, restaurants, dance halls and bars in every village, and county news was reported by as many as sixteen community newspapers each week. Because there were a sizable number of German immigrants living in the Catskills, and many of them were Jewish, Jews from the city found a significant portion of the county’s hostelry welcoming and observant of religious practices. By the 1950s, the Sullivan County Catskills were known as the “Borscht Belt.”

But then cheap air fares and air conditioning changed everything. Suddenly, the warm waters and sandy beaches of Florida were an affordable two-hour flight away, and spending July and August in the city was tolerable as long as you had AC. Sullivan’s major hotels struggled to retain their guests by adding Olympic-sized pools, championship golf courses, glitzy night clubs, ski slopes, bowling alleys and archery ranges – whatever they could think of to keep patrons coming back. But by the 1970s, Catskill hotels were in serious decline. Fire eventually took many of them, and others were simply shuttered and left to the elements. Hundreds of bungalow colonies that depended on season-long guests also failed. Over the next two decades, the county’s landscape became increasingly marred by abandoned structures of all types, decrepit eyesores that were a depressing testament to the region’s once prosperous past.

This was the Sullivan County we encountered when we began our search for a weekend retreat. Despite the discouraging prospects, we kept at it for the better part of a year, making multiple trips from Queens, hoping to find that one silk purse amid the sows’ ears. Sophie Paley was just one of the agents we used, and we actually had a bid accepted on a sweet little cottage in the hamlet of Lake Louise Marie, but at the last minute the owner backed out. We were about to give up when one June morning the phone rang.

“I’ve got it. Just what you’ve been looking for. But you’ve got to come right away!” It was Ms. Paley, and she was even more animated than usual. “The owners have listed the property with half a dozen agents and I don’t know how long it will last. Come!” We rented yet another car and drove up that afternoon.

The house was a handsome two-story stucco structure on a landscaped lot surrounded by three acres of fields and wooded bowers. Located in White Sulphur Springs, it had three bedrooms, a parlor, a dining room with French doors and two bathrooms. At the back of the property was a two-car garage-style barn with an apartment on the second floor, a space perfect for a studio. The house even had a porch with a view and was well within our price range. It indeed was just what we’d been looking for, and later that week we made an offer. It was accepted, and by August we were new homeowners with a monthly mortgage payment to prove it.

* * *

MADELINE AND I walked up the hill toward the barn, our shadows playing over the tall grass in the field next to the driveway. The setting sun was still warm, but the gentle breeze rustling the leaves at our feet was turning cool. In the late afternoon light, the twinkling under the trees was even more pronounced. “I think it’s maybe some glass,” Madeline said as we jogged around the barn and hiked up to the tree line. We had yet to visit that corner of our new property, and I was curious to see what lay under the pines. As we reached them, Madeline grabbed my arm. “Correction. It’s maybe a lot of glass!”

There before us, in a break in the foliage, was a heap of glass bottles. Hundreds of them. All different colors, shapes and sizes, sparkling in the sunlight. “Oh my god, what is this?” she said, more astonished than distressed.

What it was was a dump. A refuse pile created over many decades by the house’s previous owners. There had been no mention of it when we purchased the property, and we hadn’t noticed it in the weeks since. But there it was, hidden by the trees and partly covered by weeds and scruffy holly bushes that had sprung up over the years. It was a vast accumulation of soda bottles, condiment jars, ketchup and mustard bottles, cosmetic containers, wine and whiskey bottles, and hundreds of canning jars, many still filled with fruits and vegetables from summers long past. But that wasn’t all. Mixed in with the glass were rusty soup, soda and beer cans, sardine tins, aerosol cans, worn out pots and pans and kitchenware, bed springs and metal scrap of every sort. I noticed a pair of broken fireplace andirons, and Madeline poked an old rubber boot with a stick. “What a mess!” she said. “They must have been hauling trash up here for nearly fifty years.” The house had been built in 1929, and the dumping must have started right after the original owners moved in.

In the Depression-era 1930s, commercial trash hauling was an expense few in the rural Catskills could afford, and while there were municipal dumps, most families simply opted for a convenient ravine on or near their property to dispose of their rubbish. Paper, cloth and wood items were burned; glass, metal, rubber and other nonflammable cast-offs were hauled to the ravine. Our dump was typical. Situated at the far edge of the property, it was conveniently out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Trees hid it well and whatever offending odor it may have given off was at a safe distance from the house. What set it apart was that it wasn’t located at the bottom of a hill or in some other natural depression. The detritus in our dump had been piling up for five decades within the confines of what appeared to be an old building foundation.

Made entirely of laid-up field stone, the foundation measured about twenty-five by thirty feet and was bermed into the hillside to a depth of about five feet at its back wall. Because there was no front wall, the three-sided structure probably once supported a small barn. Farmers often left a barn’s lower level open on one side to allow easy access for farm animals. Hay and grain stored in mows on the barn’s upper level could then be easily dropped down as feed. Though our foundation was on the small side, it probably had provided shelter for as many as a dozen dairy cows in its early years. But all that remained was the stonework − what had happened to the barn itself? I found myself wondering what had caused an essential farm building to become the repository for nothing more than household garbage.

But because the dump was largely hidden from view, my curiosity soon faded. We were busy fixing up our new home, redoing the kitchen, replacing the furnace and installing storm windows, and our contractors were rebuilding the back porch and repairing cracks in the house’s stucco exterior. Those many projects coupled with the need to hustle up enough freelance work to pay for it all left little time for speculating about events that had taken place half a century earlier. The occasional glimmer up in the trees, a reminder of that staggering accumulation of trash, soon became just another familiar and unremarkable aspect of our backyard landscape.

AS THE MONTHS passed, we settled into our country home, commuting from New York City as often as we could to spend long weekends in White Sulphur Springs. Those weekends eventually became full weeks, and after a few years, we decided to leave the city and relocate upstate permanently. Following the move, thinking of ourselves now as bona fide country folk, we added an ambitious vegetable garden. I bought a small tractor to turn its soil every spring and mow the surrounding field each fall to keep the weeds down. Because a portion of the field extended up behind our barn-garage, mowing chores took me up to the tree line that fronted the old foundation and the dump. Seeing all that glass up close once again roused my curiosity, and one afternoon I climbed off the tractor and wended my way up through the trees and underbrush. At the foundation’s edge, I picked up a big stick to use as a probe and then, carefully avoiding broken glass, stepped out onto the pile. Most of the bottles and cans on its surface were from the 1960s – no-deposit-no-return soda bottles, brown Clorox bleach bottles, aluminum pop-top beer cans and the like. But as I dug deeper, I began uncovering older items. Here was a handsomely fluted milk bottle embossed with the name of a local dairy; right next to it was a bulbous-lipped amber-tinted beer bottle from a long-gone brewery in Brooklyn. The more I dug, the more interesting were my discoveries. One item I decided to bring back to the house to show Madeline. It was a subtly-tinted aquamarine Mason canning jar, a relic clearly quite old because it was marked with a patent date of 1858.

“What do you think of this?” I said, showing her the jar after giving it a thorough washing and rinsing. “From up in the dump. Got to be at least one hundred years old, going back to before the house was built.” Madeline took the Mason jar and turned it over, running her fingers over the embossed lettering on its side. “Really nice!” she said. “Amazing that it’s still in one piece after all these years.”

“Yeah, and maybe it was originally in the old barn, or whatever was on that foundation,” I said, realizing that the vintage glass could be a direct connection to the stonework mystery. Had the building been demolished or otherwise dismantled for some reason, and in the process the jar had fallen into the lower level, only to be buried in household trash in the decades that followed? “I think I’m going to try to find out more about whatever building was on that foundation,” I said, taking the jar back. “And maybe I can learn something about the person who actually built it.”

A week later, I visited the county’s Government Center in Monticello and spent an afternoon thumbing through the hoary oversized volumes that contained the recorded deeds of all the real estate transactions that had taken place in Sullivan County going back several centuries. With a little effort, I learned that our property, a tract in Division 12 of something called the Hardenburgh Patent, had originally been part of a three-hundred acre farm owned by one John Lewis. That property included our three acres as well as a substantial portion of a mountainous tract called East Hill and a serpentine stream dubbed Horseshoe Brook. The state road from Liberty to the east and Youngsville to the west bisected the property, traveling through Robertsonville, as White Sulphur Springs was known in 1885, and up over East Hill. The county’s assessor in 1890 valued the property at a modest $800 for tax purposes, but even by late 19th-century standards, when land in the Catskills could be purchased in sizable chunks, the Lewis farm was an impressive spread. But who, I wondered, was John Lewis? I thought a trip to the newspaper morgue at the county’s Historical Society in Hurleyville might provide a few answers. As it turned out, those answers far exceeded anything I could have imagined. They told a story of lies, fraud, arson, rape − and even murder.

* * *

LIGHT SNOW HAD been falling for much of the afternoon on a gray Thursday, but warmer winds from the southwest had prevented any additional accumulation. The foot of snow already on the ground from the season’s first real storm earlier in the week had turned wet and sloppy, with blue patches of slippery ice making the evening’s chores all the more difficult. John Lewis cursed to himself as he made his way to the lower pasture to call the cows in for the night. He had spread out hay in at the far end of the barn as an enticement, and he had a bucket of grain ready for any reluctant animals. But his back was bothering him, stiff with the painful rheumatism that he suspected was the result of the severe case of grippe he’d had in March. He also suspected there’d be no dinner waiting for him when he got back to the house. Damn woman!

Lewis, one of Sullivan County’s many hardscrabble farmers, was a slight man of fifty-one years. His thinning brown hair was going gray at the sides and the droop of his walrus mustache made him look perpetually annoyed. A prominent forehead dominated his features when he removed his hat, but it was his eyes, small and hard, that made a lasting impression. They occasionally shown with more than a hint of steely meanness, or so some people thought.

Still, Lewis was a landowner of some prominence in the hamlet of Robertsonville. He’d started with a twenty-acre plot up on Swiss Hill west of the village, and in little more than a decade, he’d bought up a number of large neighboring properties on East Hill and to the north so that by 1894, he had over three hundred acres. Most of it was forested, but he’d cleared enough to support a small herd of dairy cattle, the only sort of commercial farming the Catskills’ rocky hills were good for. He kept chickens for eggs and a few pigs for meat, and his wife tended the farm’s garden so its produce could be canned, providing the household with vegetables throughout the long winter months. It was not an easy living, and everyone had to work.

Lately, though, Mrs. Lewis seemed uninterested in putting up beans, peas and corn for the winter, and even less interested in tending to her household chores.

“Sue?” John Lewis pushed the door shut against the wind and looked around the kitchen with annoyance. The stove was cold, the fire obviously having gone out long ago. He stomped the snow off his boots and called out to his wife again. “Susan!”

After a moment, he heard the floor boards above creak, and then the sound of his wife descending the stairs in the front room. Mrs. Lewis, wrapped in a blanket, came into the kitchen, a look of defiance on her face.

“Woman,” Lewis said quietly, “where’s the supper?’

“Make it yourself,” came the sharp reply. “Can’t you see I’m unwell?”

“All I see is a woman who’d rather lie abed all day doing nothing!” The farmer pulled off his gloves and unbuttoned his coat. “Now,” he said with a menacing tone, “Get that stove lit, and get some bacon fat frying in a pan, and get me my supper.” He reached for a bottle of whiskey from a shelf over the sink. “You hear me? Right now!”

Susan Lewis was a small-boned woman with carroty red hair. At 30, she was much younger than her husband, but her years as a housewife had given her a worn and dour look that belied her age. John Lewis was her second husband; she had married a farm laborer from Liberty named Mark Meddaugh when she was fourteen, just to get out of her parents’ house. That marriage had proven difficult when Susan, little more than a child, was unwilling to assume the responsibilities of married life, and an exasperated Meddaugh abandoned her after several years. It was unclear whether their split had ever been legally sanctioned, but in 1889, Susan married John Lewis. He was attracted to the young woman’s auburn curls and alabaster skin, and she saw in him an industrious farmer who was on the rise in the community. Their union had started out happily enough.

But Mrs. Lewis was uninterested in having children, a growing source of frustration for her husband. One or more youngsters would be a great help around the farm, and adult children could care for their aged parents when the time came. John had grown up in nearby Callicoon, a Sullivan County village on the Delaware River, and he and his two brothers had helped their father, a worker in the tanning industry, strip bark from the big hemlock logs that were floated downriver from the logging camps up north. With his sons’ help, the senior Mr. Lewis had been able to save enough to buy a lot in town and build a two-story home for the family. That wouldn’t have been possible without John and his brothers.

But despite John Lewis’s wishes, the Robertsonville household remained childless.

There was also the fact that his pretty wife had grown corpulent in recent years. Though her interest in food was indifferent at best, Susan seemed to add pounds with uncanny regularity, and her once comely face had assumed a doughy, unhealthy pallor. With the weight too came an increasing number of complaints: joints ached, fatigue was a constant, housework was too much to manage. Often, she would spend the entire day in bed, leaving the day’s chores for the morrow. When Lewis protested, his wife would accuse him of callousness. “Don’t you see how I’m suffering?” she would say. All Lewis could see was a woman who was more a hindrance than a help.

Susan Lewis filled the kettle from the pump at the sink and placed it on the stove, adding a few sticks to the fire in the grate. She took a basin from the sideboard and filled it with the evening meal’s dishes. When the kettle whistled, she poured its contents into the basin and then tempered it with water from the pump. Her husband sat at the table reading the paper, a cold pipe protruding from beneath his mustache. At his elbow was the bottle of whiskey and a half-drained glass. No one spoke.

In fact, neither Lewis had said anything during the supper of fried salt pork, steamed potatoes and pickled cabbage. A tense silence had been maintained ever since John Lewis came in from the barn. It was a familiar routine, a kind of competition between husband and wife to see who could hold out the longest without speaking.

It was Mrs. Lewis who finally broke the silence. “I’ll want the buggy tomorrow,” she said curtly. “And I’ll need some money.”

Lewis looked up from his paper. “Whatever for?” he said dryly.

“I need to get a few things. For the Thanksgiving pageant at the church,” she replied. “I’m meeting with the church ladies tomorrow. We’re planning the evening’s program.”

“I don’t think so,” Lewis said flatly, folding the newspaper and placing it and the pipe on the table. “I want you to see to the chores you were too ill to complete today. Doubtless you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Oh, no. I fully intend to go.”

“You will not,” Lewis said, warming to the topic. “You’re obviously too ill to do anything but stay home and take care of those things you neglected to attend to today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that.”

“But the ladies are expecting –“

“I said no!” Lewis shouted, bringing his fist down on the table. The glass fell on its side, spilling whiskey over the paper as it rolled to the floor. “End of discussion!”

Mrs. Lewis reddened, but said nothing. After a moment, she pivoted and stomped out of the room. Despite her infirmity, she quickly climbed the stairs. John Lewis heard the bedroom door slam followed by the sound of it being locked. He stood, tossed the sodden newspaper into the stove’s kindling box and then retrieved the glass.

Intolerable woman! He couldn’t stand her indolent ways any longer. Would she do nothing that he asked? He couldn’t live like this. It had to stop! What was he to do with her? What?

Lewis poured another drink, emptying the bottle, and went into the parlor. The fire in the stone fireplace had gone cold with only a few glowing embers, and there was a chill in the room. With the poker, he stirred the ashes and then added a log from the wood bin next to the hearth. After a few moments, it caught, sparking loudly as the flames rose. The farmer stared into the fire as its yellow light played across his face, his eyes narrowed and suddenly vacant.

What was he to do with her?

DUDLEY EDWARDS quietly lit the oil lamp and adjusted its wick to focus the flame. As the warm light illuminated the bedroom, he glanced down at his sleeping wife to make sure he hadn’t disturbed her. It was a little before 5 a.m. on Friday morning, and the cows in the barn would soon need to be milked. Gently closing the door, he turned and walked softly down the hallway. At the top of the stairs, he knocked at a second bedroom door. “Will,” he said softly. “Wake up, son. We’ve got work to do.”

In short order, Edwards and his nephew, William Tremper, were downstairs, pulling on their boots and donning heavy oilskin coats. With the dawn more than an hour away, it was still dark outside, but there were many tasks that needed tending to before breakfast. Picking up the lantern, Edwards unlocked the kitchen door and stepped out into the frigid morning air. His nephew followed, grabbing his hat against the wind and pulling the door shut. The men trudged through the snow up an embankment and across the road to the barn. Flurries filled the air, and following their swirls, William turned to look out over East Hill and the valley below. Something immediately caught his eye.

“Hey, Uncle Dud! What’s that?” he said. He pointed to a bright orange glow in the distant gloom. “It looks like … a fire!”

“By God, Will, that’s the Lewis place,” said the older man. He squinted, straining to see. “We’d better get over there! They may need help. Milking can wait. Get the horses – go!”

When the two men arrived, the upper story of the Lewis house was engulfed in flames. They found John Lewis outside, dressed in overalls and a sooty barn coat, and wielding an ax. He was chopping a hole in the wall next to the chimney, alternating swings with shielding his face from the heat of the flames as smoke billowed from the opening he’d cut. “My money’s in there! Got to get it out!” he cried, and then coughed violently as he took another swing.

“It’s no use, John! Fire’s got it!” Edwards shouted over the roar of the inferno. He turned to Tremper. “Let’s go around to the kitchen and see what we can pull out before the whole place goes up!”

The men kicked in the kitchen door and, fanning away smoke, hauled out whatever items they could see to grab. John Lewis came around the building and stood watching, saying nothing. Several other neighbors soon arrived, and they too joined the rescue effort until, with a great crash and an explosion of sparks, the building’s roof collapsed into the second floor. The men dropped what they were carrying and backed quickly away from the house. A searing plume of white-orange flame shot out from the kitchen doorway and window glass could be heard breaking. In what seemed like only a few moments, the entire structure was aflame, with great clouds of black smoke obscuring the dawn beginning to lighten the eastern sky.

In less than an hour, the destruction of the Lewis farmhouse was complete. A few sticks of timber and the chimney still remained stubbornly upright, but whatever else was left of the house had fallen into its cellar, transforming the excavation into a burn pit filled with hot coals licked over by blue flames.

“God, what a terrible sight!” said Dudley Edwards as he wiped sweat from his brow. He turned to his neighbor. “John, what happened?”

Lewis said nothing for a moment, then quietly replied, “Chimney fire.”

Another neighbor spoke up, concern in his voice. “Where’s Mrs. Lewis, John?” The farmer was again silent. He stared blankly at the smoldering ruins.

“John?” Edwards said gently. “Mrs. Lewis?” Lewis turned, looking distracted. Suddenly, his expression changed. He seemed to have made up his mind.

“I sent her into town to fetch help,” he said quickly. “I don’t know where she is.”

A quick check confirmed that both mares were still in their stalls. The buggy was in the barn. No one had gone to town. Edwards put the question to Lewis again.

“Might she still be in the house, John? She didn’t go after help, did she.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what happened,” Lewis replied. “Yes. It was the money. She went back in after it. I couldn’t stop her. I tried, but she wouldn’t listen.”

By noon, the ruins were cool enough that a crew of workmen summoned from the village was able to conduct a search. After removing much of the debris, they uncovered a badly charred body. Susan Lewis, it appeared, had indeed gotten caught in the fire.

THE CONFLAGRATION at the Lewis farm occurred on the morning of November 9, 1894. Two weeks later, an inquest into the circumstances of Mrs. Lewis’s death was ordered by Philip Metzger, the county coroner.

It was the peculiar behavior of John Lewis at the scene of the fire that first aroused suspicion. Dudley Edwards thought it odd that Lewis showed little concern for the fate of his spouse in the drama and chaos of that morning. In the days since, the farmer had behaved more like a carefree bachelor than a bereaved husband, and during the funeral for Mrs. Lewis at the Methodist Church, he surprised the church ladies by showing no remorse. Neighbors moved what furniture and personal items had been saved to Herbert Woods’ barn farther up the state road for safekeeping, but Lewis seemed uninterested in recovering his possessions. Instead, he had taken a room at the Maplegrove Hotel in Youngsville, and when he wasn’t working on an insurance claim for his losses or seeking a buyer for what remained of the farm and its livestock, he could be found in the hotel’s tap room nursing a stein of Rheingold beer.

People began to talk. Perhaps Mrs. Lewis’s death hadn’t been a regrettable accident? Why would she have risked going back into the burning building, even if there really had been a sum of money? John Lewis said he’d sent her after help, but nobody believed that. Susan Lewis was known to be infirm, and it was unlikely that she could have hitched up the buggy and managed the icy roads into town herself. And hadn’t the buggy been found in the barn? That story was clearly nothing more than a lie.

That John Lewis was not well liked on East Hill only added to the rumors. The farmer was known to be querulous and difficult at times, and while Mrs. Lewis was no saint, she had the sympathy of many of her neighbors. The Lewis marriage was reputed to be an unhappy one, and when an opportunity to dissolve the union had presented itself, people thought John Lewis must have taken advantage of it. If nothing else, he certainly seemed glad to be rid of her.

Talk of foul play was such that on Tuesday, November 27, Coroner Metzger empaneled a grand jury at the White Sulphur Springs fire house to hear evidence regarding the cause of Susan Lewis’s death. The eleven jurists each knew the Lewises personally, and one – Dudley Edwards – had been at the scene during the fire. Mrs. Lewis’s coffin had been exhumed from the frozen ground in the cemetery behind the church the day before and her body taken to the firehouse’s lower level. Dr. Richard Platz was summoned from Jeffersonville to examine the deceased to determine whether death might have been caused by something other than fire. Because Platz was Mrs. Lewis’s doctor, he knew Susan well, and he made quick work of his onerous task. Holding a handkerchief over his nose, he unfastened the linen shroud that girded the corpse, exposing the woman’s mangled body. Using a surgical probe, he hastily checked burned tissue for possible wounds. He was done in less than fifteen minutes.

That afternoon, the jury heard Dr. Platz’s testimony. “I found the body to be perfectly charred,” the physician began. Some in the room noticed that he seemed unsteady, his voice shaky and his words hard to hear. “The right and left lower limbs, both arms and also the skull cap were completely destroyed.” The doctor paused, taking a deep breath. “I fact, the whole body was charred to such an extent that nothing could be detected by examination as to whether Mrs. Lewis came to her death in any other way than by being burned.” With that, Dr. Platz rose and left the room.

Though he was more than a little surprised by the brevity of the doctor’s report, Coroner Metzger told the jury that they would reconvene the following morning to hear evidence from any witnesses who wished to testify in the case. John Lewis, who had been sitting impassively during the proceeding, was advised to seek legal counsel in the event that the hearing resulted in his being charged. At the word “charged,” the widower appeared to laugh to himself.

THOUGH THERE HAD been much talk on East Hill about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Susan Lewis, no witnesses came forward on Wednesday to offer evidence against her husband. As a result, the grand jury ruled the woman’s death an accident, based solely on the expert testimony of Dr. Platz. The jurists were not without bias, but the lack of proof confirming their suspicions left them no choice. John Lewis was cleared of any wrongdoing and, though questions remained regarding his behavior during and after the unfortunate event, he was free to go.

But that was not the end of the story. What Coroner Metzger and the jury members did not know was that at the time of the inquest, Dr. Richard Platz was a drug addict. A habitual user of morphine, he was under its influence when he viewed Mrs. Lewis’s body, and his judgment was undoubtedly impaired. His cursory examination of the remains was no real examination at all. Did he miss important evidence of a crime? Only two people knew for certain, and one of those was dead.

It was only when Dr. Platz was himself found dead of an overdose six months after the inquest that East Hill residents began to understand that there may indeed have been more to Susan Lewis’s demise than the official record decreed. By that time, though, John Lewis had sold his farm to William Tremper, Dudley Edwards’ nephew, and had left Youngsville for an extended stay with his sister and her husband in Olean, New York. He’d grown tired of being stared at with suspicion by his Sullivan County neighbors.

Before leaving, though, he’d filed documents with the Agricultural Insurance Co. of Watertown, NY, listing his losses. Added to a $1,330 claim for the house and its contents was an additional $450 for the barn on the property. Though that structure had been undamaged by the original conflagration, in the spring of 1895 it too had caught fire and burned. The Sullivan County Record reported the incident, noting that the cause of the blaze was unknown. “How the fire started is a mystery,” the story concluded, “unless it was caused by a thunderbolt from a clear sky.” Clearly, after November 1894, any event connected with John Lewis was suspect.

* * *

THIS WAS THE story that I pieced together after many hours spent perusing the yellowed pages of century-old newspapers at the Historical Society. We’d bought our house and its three acres from the descendants of William Tremper, the East Hill farmer who had purchased John Lewis’s three hundred acres over a century earlier. The foundation at the back of our property, the repository for decades of household trash, was undoubtedly what remained of the Lewis farm’s barn.

“That is too creepy!” Madeline said when I told her what I’d found out about the property and the foundation. “So this man John Lewis murdered his wife? On our property?”

“We don’t really know that. And no, it wasn’t on our property. His house was up the road a bit,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure where the Lewis house fire had occurred. “At least I think it was.”

“Ugh, that’s so morbid,” Madeline said, with a shiver. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.” After a moment, she said, “Why did you have to go digging this stuff up?”

“I don’t know – it was a mystery,” I said. “I guess I just wanted to know what had happened.”

“Well, now you know,” she replied. “And so do I, I’m sorry to say!”

I wasn’t really surprised by Madeline’s reaction. The John Lewis story was indeed creepy, and I thought it might be disconcerting to hear. For that reason, I didn’t share the rest of the story.

* * *

CONSTABLE IRA PORTER turned the patrol wagon from the Shandelee Road onto the dirt track that led up through the snow-covered maples to Mrs. Katie Estaing’s farm house. The trip from Liberty had been uneventful, despite patches of ice on the main road, but getting up Mrs. Estaing’s hill was another matter. Though the morning sun was bright in the cloudless December sky, the air was bitter cold and a stiff easterly breeze sent up occasional swirls of the light snow that had fallen the night before. Those drifts made the trip up to the house a challenge and, for the first time since he’d left Liberty, Constable Porter had to pay close attention to his team. With words of encouragement punctuated by more than a few heartfelt epithets, the police officer managed to get horses and wagon up the hill. He pulled around to the farmhouse, set the brake, and gathering up a satchel from under the wagon seat, climbed down. A stout man with a ruddy nose and a cobalt-colored beard, Porter adjusted his tunic, dusted snow off his shoulders and shook out his felt bobby cap. He climbed the three steps up to the porch, unbelted the satchel and pulled out official looking papers. Setting himself, he rapped sharply three times on the door. After a moment it opened, a gaunt face appearing in the crack.

“Morning, missus,” Constable Porter began. “Liberty Police, here on official business. Is Mr. John Lewis at home?”

“Police?” The door opened a bit more. Mrs. Estaing, dressed in a housework wrapper, leaned into the opening. “What he has done this time?” Her thick German accent made it “vot.”

“Not at liberty to say, ma’am,” Porter replied, his tone official. “It’s all here in this warrant. Is he on the premises?”

“Ach, yah, he is here. Up in the room,” Mrs. Estaing said. “Sleeping off the drink, I’m thinking.” After a moment she said, “But come – the cold is getting in!”

At the top of the stairs, Mrs. Estaing directed the officer to a room at the end of the hall. Porter tapped on the door several times with his night stick. “Mr. Lewis? John Lewis?” he said. After a moment, he tapped again, harder. “Mr. Lewis. Police. Open up, sir.”

A groan was heard within, followed by a rustling. Porter looked at the mistress, and she shook her head. “Every day like this,” she said, nodding toward the door. She turned and headed back downstairs.

“What do you want?” said a voice behind the door. “Disturbing a man while he’s trying to sleep!”

“Open up, Mr. Lewis,” said Porter.

“Go away, I’m sick in bed.”

“Sir, open this door. Right now!”

After a moment, the lock clicked and the door swung back. John Lewis peered out into the darkened hallway. “Who are you?” he said, frowning and rubbing his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Constable Porter of the Liberty Police,” the officer said, rising to his full height. “You’ll have to come with me, sir. I have here a warrant for your arrest.” He held out the paper.

“What? Arrest! What for?” Lewis squinted at the document. “I can’t read that. I haven’t done anything. Get off with you!” He stepped back and began closing the door. Porter’s boot halted its progress.

“You’re coming with me, Mr. Lewis, whether you like it or not,” the officer growled. “You can go peacefully, or you can make it hard on yourself. Either way, you’re coming.” He pushed the door wide open and entered the room. “Now, get yourself dressed,” he said as he sat on the rumpled bed. “I’ll wait.”

On December 4, 1896, John Lewis was taken to the Liberty Police Station on North Main Street to be arraigned on charges of perjury and fraud. C.H. Lacey, a claims adjuster for the Agricultural Insurance Co., had accused Lewis of submitting a falsified report of losses from his burned farmhouse. Lacey stated the insured had listed some $200 worth of household goods as “consumed by fire,” when in fact they were still extant and presumed to be in the claimant’s possession. The claim had been filed in the months following the destruction of Lewis’s home in November 1894, and a sum of nearly $1,400 had been paid to the aggrieved farmer the following year. That amount was now in question, and the company was seeking legal redress. An additional claim for the barn on Lewis’s property was also viewed as suspect, but lacking any real evidence that the fire had resulted from anything other than natural causes, the Watertown insurer declined to pursue it.

At the arraignment, Justice Cleveland Darbee heard evidence given by Herbert S. Wood, John Lewis’s former East Hill neighbor. Wood stated that most if not all of the items in question were still stored in his barn, right where they’d been taken the day after the fire. Lewis seemed uninterested in claiming them, but Wood was eager to have them removed as they were taking up considerable space. He said he’d repeatedly asked his neighbor to take his belongings, but Lewis had refused, becoming increasingly abusive with each encounter. Determined to resolve the matter, Wood explained that he’d contacted Agricultural Insurance and informed them that items rescued from the Lewis house fire were in his barn, and they might want to investigate the veracity of John Lewis’s claim. Mr. Lacey responded, and his investigation had resulted in the charges.

Justice Darbee, noting the defendant’s questionable reputation, ordered Lewis held until a grand jury could be organized later in the month. The prisoner awaited trial in a cell in the county jail in Monticello, all the while protesting his innocence. Winter weather delayed the convening of the grand jury, and it was not until January 25 that a trial date was set − nearly two months after John Lewis had been taken into custody.

Presiding over the grand jury was County Court Judge Hiram Smith, and John Lewis was represented by a Parksville attorney named Benjamin Reynolds. Claims Adjuster Lacey was the first witness to testify, and he described in detail the coverage outlined in the policy issued by Agricultural Insurance. He then highlighted the alleged discrepancies in John Lewis’s claim for items lost in the fire. Herbert Wood next took the stand and recounted events on the day of the fire, mentioning the unfortunate death of Mrs. Lewis and listing the furniture, clothing and silverware he had kindly stored in his barn in the intervening years. Lewis, he said, had repeatedly refused to collect his belongings.

Then it was the defendant himself who testified. Under questioning by Reynolds, Lewis said he had made his claim in good faith, and that he had accounted for the possessions in Wood’s barn when submitting the list of his losses to Agricultural Insurance. As proof, he produced what he said was a copy of his original claim. It was the first time anyone in the courtroom had seen it.

“Is there an entry that records the rescued goods?” asked Reynolds.

“Oh, yes,” said the witness. “Right here.” Lewis held up the document and pointed to a line.

“And what is the value of those items?”

“One hundred and twenty dollars.”

“The amount that was deducted from the original claim. Is that correct?”

“It is,” replied the lawyer’s client. “Those goods in Wood’s barn were never claimed by me, and I was never reimbursed for them. They’re still there, and Agricultural Insurance is welcome to them, for all I care!”

A murmur was heard in the court room, and the newspaper reporters present began scribbling in their notebooks. The judge called for order and then turned to Mr. Reynolds.

“Counselor, do you have any further questions?”

“Just one, your honor.” The lawyer addressed his client. “Mr. Lewis, have you ever been in jail before?” The room suddenly went silent.

“Yes. Yes, I have.” Murmurs again.

“And where, may I ask, was that?”

“Libby Prison. Richmond, 1864,” came the reply. The audience in the courtroom gasped. After overcoming his surprise, Judge Smith had to use his gavel to reestablish order.

It was common knowledge that John Lewis was a veteran of the Civil War. But no one knew that he’d been a prisoner in the notorious Confederate facility in the South’s capitol. Libby was second only to Andersonville in the number of Union prisoner deaths, and soldiers there suffered all manner of privations − starvation, disease, physical abuse. That John Lewis had endured those hardships and had survived – and had never even mentioned the experience – instantly elevated his standing in the eyes of many in the courtroom that afternoon. It took the jury just twenty minutes to return a verdict of not guilty on all charges. Judge Smith dismissed them, ordered the court cleared and then told the defendant he was free to go. But before John Lewis left the room, the judge took him aside and, grasping his hand firmly, thanked him for his service to the Union cause.

A week later, Mrs. Katie Estaing filed a complaint at the Liberty Police Station against her lodger, Mr. John Lewis, for non-payment of his rent and board for the months prior to his incarceration. She was advised to seize his horse and any other personal items until restitution could be made. But upon returning to her farmhouse in Youngsville, Mrs. Estaing discovered that Lewis was gone, and so too were his horse and all his belongings.

Five months later, Herbert S. Wood’s home in Youngsville went up in flames. The fire was detected early one July morning, and Wood had just enough time to rouse his family and get everyone to safety before the house was completely engulfed. The fire marshal who inspected the remains ruled the disaster a chimney fire, even though the weather had recently turned hot and muggy, and Mr. Wood hadn’t had a hearth fire since May. Suspicions of foul play were further aroused when Wood recalled seeing what looked like a hole chopped through an outside wall right next to the chimney. “I noticed it because there was smoke coming out of it,” he told neighbors. “How it got there, I don’t know. But I have my suspicions!”

It was said that by that time John Lewis had left the Catskills and was living with relatives in Florida or maybe Georgia. But no one really knew where he’d gone off to. It was entirely possible that he was still somewhere in the Catskill Mountains.

* * *

THE LEWIS NAME appeared with some regularity in the old newspapers I pored over at the Historical Society. Each time I came across a mention of the farmer and war veteran, I felt a jolt of excitement – what had the man done this time? It seemed like he was always getting into trouble of one sort or another. When I learned that he’d beaten a conviction for insurance fraud by revealing that he been a Union prisoner of war, I wanted to know more. Perhaps that experience accounted for his irascible temperament?

With help from the librarian at the Liberty Public Library, I got access to the volumes published by the National Park Service containing the service records of all the soldiers from New York State who fought in the Civil War. After a few days of leafing through the books and numerous near hits, I finally found my man.

John D. Lewis, age 19, of Callicoon Depot, NY, had enlisted in the Union Army in October 1861, becoming a member of the 56th Regiment, New York Infantry. In March 1862, he was transferred to the 7th New York Battery Artillery, and then was wounded in December 1864, probably in the battle of Murfreesboro, TN. The record said he was mustered out as a private on July 22, 1865.

Lewis had indeed been a veteran of the Civil War – that part of his story was true. But what clearly was not true was that he’d been a prisoner of the Confederacy. He’d never been anywhere near Richmond, VA, and there was no record of him ever having been an inmate at Libby Prison or any other Southern prisoner-of-war facility. It seemed the man had simply made up that aspect of his service, a cynical ploy to win the sympathy of the jury during his trial. Though three decades had passed, the War Between the States was still fresh in the memories of many, and doubtless more than a few of the men on the jury were also veterans. The POW fabrication was a shrewd move on John Lewis’s part.

As for the destruction of Herbert Wood’s house, any evidence of arson was circumstantial at best. The hole chopped in the wall hinted at criminal intent, and its similarity to occurrences at the Lewis fire was uncanny, but it was obvious nothing could be proven. But from what I had read of John Lewis’s character, it seemed he wouldn’t hesitate to take revenge on anyone he suspected of wronging him. But even though that may have been what East Hill residents thought at the time, the matter was never pursued, and Lewis remained a free man.

That is, until his behavior finally caught up with him in 1912.

* * *

STANDING ON the granite curb along Chestnut Street, Lizzie Brundage watched the iceman rub the sawdust off one of his big blocks. Gripping it with tongs, he hefted it off the back of his wagon and dropped it onto a hand barrow. It was dripping, Lizzie could see, and she wished she could chip off a piece to suck on. Even though it was still only June, the day had turned unseasonably hot, and the girl hadn’t worn a bonnet. She thought she and her friend, Flora Kolbinskie, would be inside, working in the barn for the afternoon, and she wouldn’t need a cover. Now, out in the sun and no shade nearby, she worried about her complexion. It was unfair to ask her to wait outside in such weather. If only Flora would hurry up!

Ten minutes later, an elderly man came quickly down the alleyway between the houses and, without looking at Lizzie, turned and walked off down Chestnut Street. He was wearing baggy coveralls and a collarless shirt, a faded bandanna around his neck and a sweat-stained straw hat on his head. The girl watched his back as he hurried away. What a wizened old pappy, she thought. What was Flora doing with him?

Miss Brundage waited another five minutes, and then, stomping her foot in frustration and hiking her skirts, she wheeled and stalked down the alleyway. Behind Mr. Seybold’s house, she came upon her friend just coming out of the barn. “Well, there you are!” she said, annoyed. “I’ve been out here in the sun forever, just waiting for you. Really, Florrie, what are you about? We’re supposed to be working!”

Flora’s face was flushed, and there were bits of straw in her tangle of auburn hair. She laughed, a girlish giggle. “Oh, Liz, why be such a scold? We have plenty of time to get the stalls ready.” She straightened her apron and sighed. “Well, that’s done.” Turning to her friend, she said, “Let’s see to the horses.”

“Oh, Florrie!” Lizzie grabbed her friend’s hand. “What are you doing? With him? He’s so old!”

Flora Kolbinskie looked away, avoiding her friend’s eyes. “What … whatever do you mean?” she said softly.

“You know what I mean,” Lizzie said gently. “Flora, no good can come of this!”

“Oh, no, you’re wrong,” the girl replied. “You’re wrong because … because I know Mr. Lewis is in love with me!”

WHEN FANNY LEWIS heard her husband come in, she dropped the pot she was scrubbing in the sink and dried her hands. In the hallway, John Lewis was hanging his hat on the rack by the door, his face flush with the heat and his shirt damp with sweat. He did not look at his wife.

“Well, here you are,” Fanny said. “Been working hard, I see.”

Lewis said nothing as he untied the kerchief around his neck and wiped his brow.

“Over at Seybold’s, I suppose?” she said. After a moment she added, “Weren’t you there just this morning?”

“The horse needed tending again,” Lewis said, still not looking at Fanny. “I’m just doing my job. For Miss Van Etten.”

“Your job, yes,” Mrs. Lewis said, a hint of anger in her voice. “Only, the curious thing of it is, I saw Rose Van Etten ride by in her horse-and-buggy not an hour ago.” She paused, and then added bitterly, “Hard to tend to an animal that’s not there!”

Lewis turned and glared at his wife. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. She folded her arms, returning her husband’s stare. “Look here, John Lewis, after twelve years of marriage, there are few secrets between us. Your business is your business, and I don’t care what you do. But your work in Seybold’s barn involves more than just Miss Rose’s horse.”

Lewis’s flushed face went red with anger. He pushed past his wife and stomped up the stairs. “Liar! I won’t hear it! I’m taking a bath –“

“Oh, yes, you won’t hear it!” Fanny shouted after him. “But people talk, and a bath won’t wash away the stain your behavior is bringing on this house. John, for heaven’s sake − she’s just a girl!”

Florence Kolbinskie liked to be called “Flora.” It made her feel pretty, like a flower. And she was pretty – at least, that’s what people said. The boys at school were always teasing her, and though she had only just turned fourteen, her figure already had begun to fill out. Older men seemed to notice her in the street, and she could feel them watching as she passed by. It frightened her, this attention; but it also left her with a confusion of other feelings. Part of her liked those feelings, and that made her feel naughty, which made her like them even more. There were some nights when she’d waken from a pleasant dream with such strong feelings it made her entire body ache.

Then one chilly day in January, something happened.

It was in Otto Seybold’s big horse barn. Rose Van Etten kept her horse there, and she had gotten Flora, her cousin, an after-school job cleaning out stalls. The girl had to rake up old bedding and replace it with fresh straw, fill the feed buckets and fetch water from the kitchen pump for the trough. It was hard work, and because Flora had little enthusiasm for it, she often spent more time mooning over the horses than tending to her tasks. Sometimes one or another of the teamsters would come by to get a carriage ready for a trip to Monticello or Fallsburg, and their flirting with Flora provided a welcome distraction. Often, it was Mr. Lewis, Cousin Rose’s driver, who would be there when Flora arrived, brushing out the Van Etten horse or washing down the buggy.

On that January afternoon, Flora was dawdling over her work, daydreaming of other things, when the side door suddenly swung open. In a rush of cold air, in stepped John Lewis, bulky in a heavy overcoat, a woolen scarf around his neck. His ruddy face was hidden beneath the brim of his felt fedora as, looking down, he pulled off his gloves. But when he looked up and saw the girl leaning on her rake, he smiled.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look who it is.” His small eyes had a bright, hard shine. “Good afternoon to you, Miss Flora!”

“Oh, Mr. Lewis, you startled me!” the girl said. She giggled nervously.

“My apologies, little one, but I was in a hurry to get inside out of the cold.” Lewis blew on his hands and rubbed them together. “The weather looks to turn nasty this evening.”

“Oh, yes? Then I should be getting home,” said Flora. “But … there’s so much left to do.” She sighed.

The driver removed his hat, unbuttoned his coat and pulled off his scarf. “Well, I’ve got to work on Miss Van Etten’s sleigh. I believe she plans to visit relatives this weekend.” He crossed over to the stall and leaned against the rail, gazing intently at Flora. After a moment, he said softly, “A pity such a pretty girl as you has to muck out stalls. You’re much too fine a princess for such work. Just like Cinderella – slaving in the scullery when you should be caught up in the arms of a Prince Charming.”

The girl blushed and giggled again. “Oh, Mr. Lewis, you’re silly!” After a moment, she quietly added, “Do you really think so?”

“I do. Indeed I do, my dear,” Lewis cooed. “Why, if you’ll permit me, I’ll show you just how a proper prince might treat a princess such as yourself.” The driver moved around the railing and into the stall. He took the rake from the girl’s hand and let if fall to the floor.

“Mr. Lewis, I … I …,” Flora stammered. She stepped back, nervously brushing away her hair. Her eyes met the elderly man’s and she felt an overwhelming rush of familiar feelings. He suddenly grasped her around the waist and pulled her to him. “Oh − Mr. Lewis!” she gasped, tilting her head back. When the driver kissed her full on the mouth, she did not resist. The next moment they were in the new hay, an elderly prince and his stable princess entwined in royal passion.

With the oats bucket empty, Miss Van Etten’s mare turned and watched the assignation impassively from the next stall.

In January 1910, John Lewis was 67 years old. After returning to Sullivan County in 1898 following his trial for insurance fraud, he had married Fanny Misner, a woman from Grahamsville some twenty years his junior. They set up house in the three-story Victorian on the corner of Buckley and North Main streets in Liberty, and Lewis found work as a teamster, farrier and horse groomer. One of his regular clients was the Van Etten family, several generations living in a house farther up the hill on North Main Street.

Also residing in the Van Etten household were a niece, Emma Kolbinskie, and her three children, Albert, Bertie and Florence. Florence, born in June 1895, was barely a teenager when she and John Lewis began their ill-fated affair in Seybold’s barn on that chilly afternoon. It continued into the summer months and only cooled when Lewis began to lose interest – and the girl began to show. By August, it was clear that little Flora was pregnant.

In November, the Kolbinskie girl was confined to the Liberty offices of Dr. Phoebe Low, a physician and midwife. At 75, Dr. Low had long practiced a kind of crude medicine in the village, and though her reputation was questionable, she was known to be someone who was willing to help women in trouble. At the time, though, the doctor was under indictment for causing the death of a seventeen-year-old girl from Hancock after a botched abortion – a “terrible crime” as the newspapers characterized the incident. Dr. Low had also suffered a stroke in October and was partially paralyzed. But she took Flora in and under her care, the girl gave birth to a baby boy on November 22, and soon afterward the doctor dispatched Edward Scott, her assistant, to Buckley Street to request payment for her services. Flora Kolbinskie had named John Lewis as the child’s father.

“The girl lies!” John Lewis retorted when confronted by Scott at his front door. “I know her, of course I do. I’ve known her since she was seven years old. But it’s common knowledge the girl is of loose morals, a temptress and a flirt. The child is not mine, and I won’t pay you a cent!”

Word of Flora’s downfall quickly spread throughout the village, and Lewis’s scandalous behavior with the naive school girl brought condemnation from all quarters. The matter was soon referred to George Cooke, the county’s district attorney, and he promptly issued a warrant for John Lewis’s arrest on multiple charges of rape. The victim of his crimes, Flora Kolbinskie, was sent to the New York State Training School for Girls, a facility for “incorrigible” young women in Hudson, NY. Her baby was quickly given up for adoption.

When Sheriff Elmer Winner went to Buckley Street to take the accused into custody, he found John Lewis had absconded. Mrs. Lewis said she had no idea where her husband was, only that he’d packed a bag and had gone to the O&W station the day before. That was the last she’d seen of him, she said, and good riddance. Winner requested that Fanny contact him as soon as Lewis returned. “Oh, yes, I certainly will, Sheriff,” she replied bitterly. “You can depend on that!”

IT WOULD BE a year before John Lewis was arrested for allegedly raping Flora Kolbinskie. In the intervening twelve months, he’d traveled to Florida, Georgia and Virginia, moving frequently from location to location, never staying in one place very long. When he was finally captured, it was at the Veterans Home in Bath, NY. He was transported back to Liberty in December 1911, and spent the next five months in the county jail awaiting trial.

When Lewis was finally brought before a jury in May, numerous witnesses testified that they had seen him with the Kolbinskie girl at Seybold’s barn and at various other places around town. The ailing Dr. Low had died in February, but her former assistant, Edward Scott, recounted his confrontation with Lewis and said he was convinced the girl was telling the truth. Flora then took the stand and told of her seduction and debasement in lurid detail, pointing out the defendant as the perpetrator and father of her child. She then shocked the courtroom by revealing that Lewis had also introduced her to several of his friends, and she had been intimate with them as well. Like the defendant, they each were old enough to be her grandfather.

Though John Lewis vehemently denied having physical relations with Flora, and claimed he didn’t know the men she said were his friends, the jury was unconvinced. It took them less than an hour to return a verdict of guilty, and the judge sentenced the teamster to five years at hard labor in the state prison in Dannemora, NY. He was paroled after serving three-and-a-half years and returned to Liberty where he lived with his wife Fanny until he suffered a stroke in June 1917, and died several days later. The local newspapers reported that he was 75 years old.

* * *

SO ENDED THE saga of John Lewis of East Hill. With all that I’d learned about him, it gradually became clear to me why the barn had never been rebuilt on the foundation at the back of our property, and why it had been deemed a site suitable for nothing more than household waste. When the Trempers, the family that had purchased the Lewis farm, decided to build their own barn, they put up an entirely new structure further down the hillside. Though a serviceable foundation already existed, they wanted nothing to do with anything connected to John Lewis, a person they knew very well. Instead, they buried the memory of the man and his crimes with their garbage. I understood why – it was a fitting memorial.

After a while, I decided it was time to purge East Hill of what remained of the Lewis taint. I called a carting company and had a large dumpster delivered. With the help of several neighbors, Madeline and I spent a week filling the container with the foundation’s detritus. It took an additional dumpster to complete the work, but when all the trash was finally gone, we had a contractor with a backhoe collapse the foundation and fill in the depression. When he was done, it was as though nothing had ever been there. In time, grass covered the spot and it became just another part of the field at the back of our property. I mowed it each fall, and rarely ever thought of John Lewis.

There was only one item we kept. It was the 1858 Mason jar. I was certain it came from a period on East Hill prior to the Lewis indiscretions, and for that reason I thought we should preserve it. That it had survived all these years seemed somehow a testament to the innate goodness of the world, evidence that things come right in the end. Its blue-tinted glass once reflected light in the Lewis kitchen, and then it reflected light in the Lewis barn, then in the Tremper dump, and now it was reflecting light on the shelf in our pantry. And that is where it will stay.