Victorian Southwest Michigan True Crime

By Michael Delaware

Murder and mystery haunt the shadowy corners of the Victorian Era in Southwest Michigan.

Decades after his supposed death in 1846, a litigious bachelor was discovered to have been buried alive. In 1865, a Battle Creek woman, yearning for her lover, used Spiritualism to conceal poisoning her three children. An 1883 unsolved quadruple homicide near Jackson caused two suicides, one attempted suicide and two assassination attempts. In 1891, a ten-year-old girl adopted from the State School in Coldwater one morning was found dead in an icy river two counties away that same afternoon.

Researcher and author Michael Delaware unfurls these and other stories that shocked Michigan and the nation over a century ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781540260086

Michael Delaware

Michael Delaware is a Phoenix, Arizona native who now resides in Battle Creek, Michigan with his wife Margarita. He also lived in Georgia for 15 years before moving to Michigan. He is a member of the National Association of Realtors, The Council of Residential Specialists, and the Michigan Association of Realtors. He is also an active member of the Battle Creek Area Association of Realtors where he was awarded 'Realtor of the Year' in 2010, and served as Board President in 2011. As an author, his works include numerous non-fiction books on real estate, sales management, marketing and other self-help topics. He has also written and published fiction stories for children all independently published by the: ‘If, And or But’ Publishing Company.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Victorian era refers to the period in Western history during the reign of England’s Queen Victoria from 1837 until her death in 1901. In England and America, it was a time of transition from predominantly rural agricultural economies to the height of the Industrial Revolution.

As with any time period, there are those who committed heinous crimes disturbing the tranquility of society. This is a book about true crime. All of the events described within actually happened, and the stories are told with the best efforts at historical accuracy.

In some cases, material on events was limited. Whenever possible, details were cross-referenced between newspaper accounts, biographical material, land records, birth and death records, census records, historical maps and the works of other historians from the period.

As you read through this collection of stories, it is important to note that the investigative procedures of law enforcement during the Victorian era were quite different from what we read today in novels or see on true crime shows on streaming services and television.

The usefulness of fingerprint evidence did not become known until Sir Francis Galton, an Englishman, published a scientific study on the subject in 1892. Although the police in Scotland Yard in London made use of this information following the release of the study, the method for identifying individuals was not put into broad use by law enforcement in the rest of England and America until decades later.

Queen Victoria, 1859. By Franz Xaver Winterhalter—Royal Collection.

In 1901, Karl Landsteiner made the discovery of the first human blood groups. Prior to that, testing for blood at crime scenes was done only to verify whether it was human or animal.

Testing of chemicals found in the stomach of a victim could be done, if labs were available, to determine whether the individual was poisoned or ingested some other lethal compound. However, knowledge of forensic medicine was limited.

Transportation in Michigan during the Victorian era was also restrictive. Travel by law enforcement to a crime scene was done by horseback, wagon, carriage or on foot.

After the 1870s, which was considered a golden age of the railroad in the Great Lakes region, law enforcement could take trains to reach locations or deliver specimens collected to laboratories at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor if needed. Prior to that in southwest Michigan, horseback couriers, stagecoaches and carriages were used to deliver samples to the westernmost train station or, depending on the year, all the way to the lab.

The automobile would not come into broad use until the 1920s.

Communications were much slower as well. The first telegram was sent by Samuel Morse from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1844. Although Western Union built the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, with over 100,000 miles of telegraph lines by 1866, even stretching across the ocean to Europe, messages required trained code users to interpret until 1914. Expansion of telegraph lines often followed the railroad, not offering access to many smaller communities in Michigan until after 1870. Getting an alert sent required someone to journey to the telegraph office and find an available operator.

Telephone exchanges did not begin to be established in communities until mid-1880, and long-distance telecommunications in Michigan did not come into broad use until the early 1890s. When someone sent for law enforcement from a rural area, this was typically done by sending a rider or a runner to notify them. Arrival time of law enforcement at a crime scene could be several hours from the time it was discovered and reported.

Compounding the problem with delays in transportation and communications was crime scene contamination. Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story with The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, and it was embraced by an enthusiastic readership. Inspired by Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his Sherlock Holmes series in magazines starting in 1887, fueling a culture of amateur sleuthing during this era.

In many cases, authorities would arrive on a scene to find neighbors and journalists had already been on location for hours, gawking at the victims, trampling over footprints, collecting and disturbing evidence in an effort to find clues or get the scoop. An extreme example can be found in the Crouch murders of 1883.

The practice of law enforcement securing crime scenes as it has evolved today, to preserve evidence, did not come into broad use until almost over a century later. DNA testing, blood splatter and body fluid analysis, hair and fiber comparison, ballistic testing, grid search patterns, chain of custody and so many other tools and methods in modern use by investigators were not even on the horizon during this time.

Detectives of this era also had limited to no use of photography until after the Civil War in 1865, when it began to become more mainstream. Although the first use of forensic photography was introduced in Belgium in 1851, the practice did not become cutting edge until the 1870s. Broad use of photography in crime scene investigation did not become common until the early 1900s.

A few of the stories within this collection were unsolved murders during their time. Perhaps if the investigators of that era had the tools of modern-day law enforcement, the cases would have been solved.

The legal process was different then as well. When it came to trials, often a lot of hearsay evidence was allowed to be admitted, which would be denied in courtrooms today. Hearsay evidence is largely inadmissible in modern judiciaries because of the inability of the other party to cross-examine the maker of the reported statement.

According to legal blogs, the history of the hearsay rule as a distinct idea began only in the 1500s in English courts and did not gain complete development and final precision until the 1700s. From the 1600s to the 1800s, the rule developed slowly, and the first rule became universally accepted in the English and American legal systems in the mid- to late 1800s.

In reviewing published testimonies of trials during this era, as in the case of the Crouch murder trial, it is clear that hearsay evidence was still permitted in the Jackson County courts in 1884. The same would hold true for many of the other trials detailed herein.

In Michigan at that time, when a man was convicted of a crime, especially first-degree murder, the punishment often included solitary confinement intermixed with hard labor. Many a convict went insane from extended isolation, aging far beyond their years when serving out their sentence.

Women, on the other hand, if convicted, were often given better treatment when incarcerated. During the Victorian era, there were two regulators of feminine behavior: society and the law. The law was written in an attempt to treat women and men equally when it came to crimes such as murder. However, the law was enforced by members of a society that did not believe men and women were alike. In many legal cases of the time, when it came to a woman on trial for murder, the jury—which was composed of men—held firm with the assumption that female nature did not predispose them to be capable of the temperament to commit murder. Murder was regarded as masculine behavior.

Thus, when you read the cases of Sarah Haviland and Mary Sanderson in this collection, consider their outcomes within the context of Victorian-era society. It will also shine light on why Austin Smith was charged with murder and Anna Owens was so easily exonerated.

Further, it is also important to note that during my research there were contradictory spellings of individual names between sources of written accounts. For example, one of Martin and Frances White’s daughters was referred to as May in all newspaper accounts of the case. Some written by reporters who knew her, however, burial records and her headstone indicate her name was in fact Mary. The 1880 U.S. census listed her name as May, so it is likely she was called that as a nickname. Thus in writing the story, I had a difficult decision on which to use and ultimately chose the name written on her headstone.

Another example of this is in the Dall Swartz case. Most of the newspaper accounts of the time spelled his name as Del Swartz. However, a biographical account that was written by a detective who worked the case clearly spelled his name as Dall. Upon reflection, I decided to use the spelling of the firsthand account of an investigator on the case, rather than that of a newspaper reporter who may have transcribed the story from a telegraph transmission.

Also, there were some names where I decided to use the common name the person was called at the time, rather than their full given names.

Examples of this are in the Haviland Children Murders of 1865. The name of one of the sons was Ira Arthur Haviland. However, he was referred to by everyone of the time as Arthur, so that is what I used in telling the story. Additionally, I considered it might have been confusing to the reader if I referred to him as Ira, as this was also his father’s name. Likewise, one of Haviland’s daughters was Nancy Jane Haviland, but in all testimonies from people of the time, she was referred to simply as Jane. Thus, I chose to use what she was commonly called.

As a final note, you will find within the pages of this book that the method of murder varied from revolvers, knives, axes and razors to hammers, poison, strangulation and more. It was with no intention on my part to include such a wide methodology to murder. My research mission was to find crimes that spanned the period and the region, especially forgotten stories that received statewide and national interest in their time. It does, however, bear out as a historical truth that it is not the instrument of murder that holds any consistency, but the sinister impulse behind the criminal act wherein lies the true evil.

Michael Delaware

2023

1

THE TRAGIC DEATH OF DORRENCE WILLIAMS (1846)

This morning while Charles Sturgis, the sexton at Oak Hill Cemetery, assisted by Josiah M Caldwell, were removing the remains of Dorrence Williams on the cemetery lot now belonging to Daniel Clark, they made a discovery…

—Battle Creek Daily Moon, October 3, 1887

Dorrence Williams came originally from Newton Township, Portage, Ohio, where he owned fifty-nine acres. He first arrived in Michigan working as a surveyor of the land surrounding the region of the Goguac prairie in 1828, long before any non-Indigenous settlers had arrived. This area of southwest Michigan would eventually be organized into Calhoun County a few years later. The community that would in time emerge first as the village of Milton, and later as Battle Creek, was still an untamed wilderness.

SURVEYORS AND SETTLERS

The first survey conducted on the Michigan Territory of any significant import was completed in an expedition of 1814–16 by Edward Tiffin. Tiffin had been the first governor of Ohio in 1803, and in later years he was appointed as the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory by President James Madison.

His expedition was to determine the condition of land in the vast Northwest Territory, which the U.S. government intended to give to the veterans of the War of 1812 in exchange for their service. Tiffin’s report on the rest of the region, which included Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, was favorable. However, his report on Michigan claimed that the land was mostly swamp and unsuitable for agriculture.

The Tiffin survey deterred early eastern settlers from finding their way into Michigan, and instead they settled in other parts of the Northwest Territory. It was not until 1820 that Lewis Cass, the second governor of the then territory of Michigan, undertook a new expedition to survey the region and returned with an entirely different report based on his observations. In the wake of the Lewis Cass Expedition, the eastern and southeastern counties were organized, and Michigan began to see an influx of settlers arriving in search of new land opportunities.

Land in these new territories was offered at $1.25 an acre by the U.S. government to anyone who wished to settle there. Further, a congressional act of 1812 gave men the incentive to serve in the U.S. Army in exchange for land. Congress passed laws that established bounty land warrants to be awarded to noncommissioned officers and soldiers, or their heirs, who served in the war. Due to the Tiffin survey, initially Michigan was avoided, and settlers converged on Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and some traveled as far as Wisconsin.

It wasn’t until the Erie Canal was finally completed in New York in 1825 that migration from the New England area into Michigan increased. However, within a decade of the Cass report, it was clear that an even more expansive survey was needed to organize the southwestern Michigan region into counties.

Beginning in 1828, hundreds of surveyors were contracted by the U.S. government on behalf of the Michigan Territory. They made their way into the wilderness to map the topography, trails and rivers of this region, surveying the terrain as part of this massive project to divide land into the future counties and townships of southwest Michigan. Dorrence Williams was one of the number of original surveyors, responsible for the section south of downtown Battle Creek today over to Athens.

When the survey teams had completed their work in 1830, fourteen lower counties of Michigan were organized under the direction of Governor Lewis Cass spanning from Jackson County west to Berrien County, south to the Indiana state line and as far north as Ingham and Barry Counties. Suddenly it was a more appealing route to travel from Vermont, Massachusetts and New York down the Erie Canal and across the Great Lakes to Michigan. In contrast, the land route that ran through Pennsylvania and Ohio to arrive in Indiana or Illinois, before Michigan, was arduous.

THE GOGUAC PRAIRIE

If you live in the area of Goguac Lake today in Battle Creek, what was called the Goguac prairie during the time of Dorrence Williams spanned from the area of the Kellogg Airfield near Helmer Road to as far east as the Penetrator (I-194). It was a flat, grassy expanse between multiple copses of burr oak, maple and pine trees. Today, it consists of entirely residential neighborhoods.

The primary Indigenous people in this region during that time were the Potawatomi. The name Goguac may have come from a Potawatomi word Coguagiack, which means waving grasses or may describe a bowl-like depression that has water, surrounded by trees and high grasses. In either case, when Williams arrived, it was a wide, expansive and mostly unpopulated prairie. Being familiar with the region since 1828, Williams was at an advantage over other pioneer explorers who would appear in 1831. He knew where he believed the premium locations were in the area to settle and made his claim on them as soon as the land was available.

The Goguac prairie offered a fertile soil, clear of dense forest. The Native Americans burned the prairie grass seasonally to enhance the visibility of smaller game, and the rich loam was now over a foot deep across many sections of the mostly level plain. These rich conditions of the soil made it perfect for growing wheat, an early pioneer crop in this region. However, plowing through this depth of loam was not without its challenges, and many a plow blade was broken as the land was cultivated.

Despite this, the wide-open prairie was more favorable to the early pioneer than forested land that required the removal of trees, stumps and brush before one could till the soil for planting. The open prairie made it possible to sow and plant wheat, a crop that grows abundantly in most any soil, before the first winter.

Williams selected a fractional quarter of section 14, in Battle Creek Township, where he settled in the late autumn of 1831. This location is just north of Goguac Lake and today contains a commercial shopping center and residential neighborhoods. (In 1873, the land was owned by William Foster, who later sold the farm to John Stewart, who would plant the first apple orchard in the Battle Creek Township.)

Wasting no time, Williams built his log cabin on the south border of the prairie near the woods. He owned in all some four hundred acres of land, a part of it lying between the future site of the downtown village of Battle Creek and Goguac Lake.

THE RIGHTEOUS BACHELOR

Williams had lived a determined life of a bachelor. He was described by those who knew him best as a good man. However, they also regarded him as a peculiar man. He was said to have considered himself a gentleman in the chivalrous sense of that term and held the highest opinion of his own honor. It was stated that he considered that his own word was solemn, and no man must challenge him on this. In other words, he thought himself very important, always right with his opinions, and asserted this position with others he encountered. Here we undoubtedly get a clue to the real difficulties that attended him through life.

His overpowering sense of honor, justice and right did not spare any sensible consideration for the human nature of others. His encounters with fellow pioneer citizens, along with his personal