Prison: Joseph Brown; Schuylkill Cos, PA Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by LaVon C. Campbell LaVcamp@aol.com USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. __________________________________________________________________________ JOSEPH BROWN "The wholesome Influence of at least one execution was felt to be needed." ***** The Schuylkill County gallows had been idle for 28 years. No one had been hanged since Pottsville became the county seat in 1851; in fact, only colored Jimmy Riggs had been legally executed since Schuylkill became a county in 1811. And Jimmy had been hanged in Orwigsburg, then the county seat, on August 13, 1847. There had been no dearth of murders in Schuylkill County through these passing years. The Civil War had come and gone. The Mollie Maquires were rampant and many men had been slain. But no one had gone to the gallows. Somehow, it seemed to most people that someone should be handged for murder. That someone turned out to be Joseph Brown, 21 year old except for one day, who went to the scaffold in the Pottsville prison March 25, 1875. And when Governor Hartranft set the day Brown was to hang the Miners' Journal, perhaps expressing the mood of the time said: "After waiting 28 years, the outraged majesty of the law was to be avenged and Schuylkill County to be the scene of a second judicial hanging. People rejoiced, no so much that the Kreamers were to be avenged, for through the influence of the time the spirit of revenge has been layed but because the wholesome influence of at least one execution was felt to be needed in this county of ours. It was felt that this step insured society at large a better protection from deeds of violence and bloodshed." Joe Brown, it seemed, was dispensible but, indeed, it had been a long, long time. **** The twin murders committed by Joe Brown were sensless and generally unprofitable. Joe had been dim-witted enough to leave both his victims alive after clubbing them liberally. But it took the Commonwealth a whit more than three years to hang him. Born in Washington Township on March 25, 1854, Joseph Brown already had a record of malice and petty thefts before the twilight afternoon of Sunday, February 25, 1872, when he murdered Daniel S. Kreamer, 62, and his wife, Anetta, 52, in their farm house three quarters of a mile from White Horse Station on the line of the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad. Young Brown lived with his 82-year-old father. He attended Summer Hill Church that fatal Sunday morning already resolved to kill the Kreamers and get money by plundering their house. Kreamer, known in the neighborhood as "rich old Kreamer," was reported to have hidden in his house the proceeds of property he had recently sold. He usually kept a considerable amount of gold and silver coin in the house and had several hundred dollars concealed in an old-fashioned clock in the corner of the farm house, a sum Joe Brown missed, incidentally, when he looted the place after the murder. The candles had not yet been lit when Brown appeared at the Kreamer house, first arming himeself with a club from a wood pile. Mrs. Kreamer was sitting on a chair; Kreamer was reclining on a chest. And upstairs was Kreamer's aged mother, 93 years old, who saw and heard little in the twilight of her life. Brown asked Kreamer to go with him to Brown's Mill for a reason never discovered by the newspaper accounts of the crime. On their way to the nearby mill, only 400 yards from the house, the young man clubbed Kreamer across the head several times. But he left the fallen man, aware he was still alive. Then he returned to the house, assualted Mrs. Kreamer with the club and when the candle fell to the floor and was extinguished, Brown re-lit it and repeatedly struck her again. Then he shattered the drawer of a desk with an axe, withdrew a small bag filled with coin and left even though Mrs. Kreamer still breathed and looked at him with fear-stricken eyes. On his way through the lane, he seized a piece of wood and struck the half-conscious Kreamer several times more. Old Mrs. Kreamer upstairs heard little noise and thought no more of it. And Joe Brown took the train to Pottsville at Moyer's Station, about $100 richer. But he was indiscreet enough to sell gold at several places in Pottsville and after one of Kreamer's sons found the father's body, and his insensible mother, it was easy enough to capture Joe Brown. At first the prisoner protested he was "too good a friend of Kreamer to hit him" and he was related to Mrs. Kreamer anyway. Then he tried unsuccessfully to implicate some friends. These accused were in jail briefly by Mrs. Kreamer, who died Sunday, March 8, said she could only remember Joe Brown was the only one who visited them that night. Mrs. Kreamer's dying statement put the finger on Joe Brown and was to figure importantly in the first trial. Brown went to trial for Kreamer's murder on August 27,1872, with District Attorney James B. Reilly and Attys. Ben Cumming, Fergus Farquhar, and George Kearcher for the defendant. Defense counsel was overruled in the contention the jury wheel was not sealed, nor locked up, as required by law, then centered the defense on the claim Brown couldn't have committed the crime because it was not proved he was absent from home that Sunday night. The Commonwealth countered that the 18 year old defendant had confessed the crime of killing Kreamer three times--once upon arrest, again in the magistrate's office and finally to a fellow prisoner in jail. And had not the other victim, Mrs. Kreamer, identified him? The court said in its charge, as to Mrs. Kreamer's dying declarations; "The declareant has no longer any motive to falsify, she is looking foward to that eternity she will soon enter upon and that God who she expects so soon to meet. Therefore the law says her declarations are to be received as though given under oath---such tesimony is certainly worth consideration." The case went to the jury September 7 and a verdict of murder in the first degree was returned. Court heard motions for a new trial September 20 including one motion the jury had separated. Jurror Clifford Pomeroy, who had a severe nose bleed, was put in a separate room in the Merchants Hotel. The motions were overruled. And when sentance was pronounced by Judge David Green on October 7, 1872, the jurist was in tears but Joe Brown was composed. He was not to die on the basis of this first trial. ******* Joe Brown's conviction was appealed to the Supreme Court on several points of error. But Mrs. Kreamer's deathbed statement was reason enough to upset the verdict. The Supreme Court in reversing judgment April 15, 1873, said: "The learned judge admitted the dying declaration of the wife, upon the trial of the defendant for the murder of her husband. In this there was error, for the husband was found dead on Monday morning, 26th February, 1872, 300 yards from his dwelling, and his wife was discovered on the same morning lying across her head in the house in an insensible condition, and with her face and head terribly beaten and disfigured. "....If the prisoner had been tried upon the indictment for the murder of Mrs. Kreamer, her dying declarations would have been strictly legal evidence against him. or, in effect, the admission of a dying declaration must be confined to the person who is a victim." ****** The second trial for Mrs. Kreamer's death was one of the most bizarre in the county's history. It began October 27,1893, with District Attorney Reilly and Lin Bartholomew again appearing for the Commonwealth and Fergus Farquhar, George R. Kaercher, and John Ryon for the defense. Defense Counsel'd first motion to dismiss on the grounds Brown was not tried for Mrs. Kreamer's murder within a year was dismissed. They then claimed John Pugh, sworn as a juror, said prior to acceptance he couldn't conscientiously serve on the jury or he would hang Brown. Pugh denied it, but he was dismissed as a juror. A motion to discharge the entire jury on the grounds an incompetant had mixed with the jury was overruled. When the term of civil court began in the court house, Brown's trial was moved downtown in Lyceum Hall. When Lyceum Hall was engaged for a "sociable." no night sessions of court were held. Then a motion was made to dismiss Henry Chambers from the jury on the grounds he expressed the opinion Brown should hang. Chambers denied it. The trial resumed. Unless one went to Lyceum Hall, he had little chance to learn anything reliable about the trial. The Journal announced it agreed (for a change) with the Pottsville Standard that no testimony in the case should be printed because about November 23 Brown was expected to stand trial for Kreamer's death and "whether the present trial gets a conviction or not, and if such testimony were to be published, it would be next to impossible to get a jury for that one. Sorry, but publication of the second trial would only be the re-telling of a well-known story." Thereafter, the Journal published only a paragraph a day about this much-discussed trial. Typical was this item of November 5, 1873: "Brown Trial--Nothing new or startling to report. A day spent in legal quibbles and taking of testimony. No night session on account of Lyceum Hall being engaged for a sociable." A false alarm of fire threw the trial in an uproar. In the confusion, one of the defense counsel snatched his hat and vanished with the out-rushing crowd. Brown remained cool and remarked to the sheriff, "Hitch me up. Put the harness on." Lin Bartholomew appeared to have dominated the closing addresses of counsel which began November 14. Bartholomew's speech was so eloquent that the crowd burst into applause. (In moving for a new trial later, the defense argued that the crowd, by applauding Bartholomew, influenced and intimidated the jury and "was a communication with the jury in an unauthorized and highly improper manner.") (Judge Green said in passing sentence on this argument that as the speech was one of unusual power, he attributed the applause to the admiration of it, and not to an endorsement of the concluding sentence which called for Brown's conviction.) "Large and eager" audiences sat at the closing sessions of the trial on Saturday night, November 15, and Fergus Farquhar, hinting at further appeals, said when Mr. Bartholomew ended, "We'll have to ask the court to discharge the jury if this continues." Judge Green rebuked the crowd and charged the jury which retired at six o"clock. At 8:15 the court house bell rang and the excited, joking crowd rushed back, even filling the window space. When Judge Green appeared, voices in the gas- illuminatied court room cried, "down in front" to those who bobbed up and down to see the proceedings better. And when the murder was again murder in the first degree with the death penalty, another appeal was made to the Supreme Court. This time judgment of the local court was affirmed and Gov. Hartranft set the hanging for March 24, 1875. ******* Joe Brown's conviction and hanging set into motion a strange chain of coincidences. For Jimmy Riggs, the first man to be hanged, had been committed by Squire Reed, and Reed's son, Morgan, had committed Joe Brown. Ben Bartholomew, Esq., had defended Riggs; his son Lin, prosecuted Brown. Riggs had been hanged by Sheriff John T. Werner; Brown was hanged by his son, J.F. Werner, and the consulting physician at the time of Riggs' hanging had been Dr. James Carpenter. His son, Dr. John T. Carpenter, was consulting physician for Brown's execution. And the sheriff's attorney at the time Riggs was hanged was John Bannan, Esq. His son, Thomas Brennan, Esq., was sheriff's attorney when Brown was hanged. Snow swirled down on Pottsville on March 24, 1875, when five feet five, 135 pounds, Joe Brown was hanged. The scaffold was brought from the Philadelphia prison and the morning trains brought crowds for the hanging. Jail Warden A.K. Bace and his wife set up a "substantial board" for some of them. The prison yard was filled , and so many of the curious were perched in nearby tree tops and on the large cherry trees on Henry Rosengarten's property that they threatened to "wrest the limbs from the sturdy trunks." Then the snow cleared and Joe Brown was ready for the gallows. He already "confessed" his crime to a Journal reporter, admitting he conceived the idea February 17, 1872, to kill Kreamer for his money. And that he had broken a piece of iron from his bedstead a week before the execution date, determined to use it on the jailer and escape. But that he had reflected that is was God's will he should die. Warden Bace attested his "confession." Rev. John P. Stein, of Trinity Reformed Church, Pottsville, and Rev. Jacob Kline, Schuylkill Haven, attended Brown and conducted final services before the execution. Then the witnesses took their places and Brown mounted to the scaffold, saying in German, "Jesus, have mercy on me. I am a poor sinner. My soul I recommend to Jesus. Jesus, dear Jesus. Dear Jesus, Lamb of God." The rope was pulled at 11:52 a.m. and the body spun in the air. Dr. Carpenter pronounced him dead 17 minutes later and then after the official spectators had left, the outside crowds were admitted. And estimated 4,000, laughing and joking, including a number of boys, came in to look at the scaffold. Joe Brown was buried in the northwest corner of the jail yard. The ministers had departed and there was no funeral service. But prisoners including Dublin Dan, a well-known character, acted as grave diggers and pall bearers. As far as can be determined, Joe Brown was the only executed man to be buried in the prison yard. How long he lay in his grave there is not known but recent inquiries failed to confirm that he is still buried there. ******* The Journal sold 10,450 copies of the issue bearing the news of the execution. On the front page were wood cuts illustrating the prison, Brown, his cell and some highly imaginative, crude, scenes of the execution. It was an all-time high run of the Journal which bragged some of its copies were sent as far as Duluth. Representatives of the New York Herald, World, and Sun, Reading Eagle, Philadelphia Evening Telegraph and Chicago Times and Tribune were at the hanging. Mr. Green, reporter of the New York Sun, took a dim view of Pottsville and its joke of Molly Maguireism on the day of Joe Brown's execution and the Journal took a dim view of Mr. Green and his "sensationalism." Mr. Green wrote the better class of people (in Pottsville) thought it strange others--the Mollies---were not under sentence of death in jail. He found in Pottsville a "fearful consumption of bad whiskey and subsequent disorder" and opined that the "storekeepers say that they can't hold out much longer." The police officers of Pottsville were found insufficient in numbers to preserve order, and for their own safety keep out of sight of the exasperated miners. And visitors to the place experience a sense of relief on escaping from the town with their lives and their valuables. Further, work in and near Pottsville is almost entirely suspended and the miners and other laborers throng the streets and roads talking of grasping employers. All this sort of talk disgusted the Journal which had already known that Joe Brown was going to die anyway. In fact it had said when the Supreme Court reversed judgment of the first trial: "A great many expressions of disgust were made at the news. Brown will be tried again, and without much doubt, receive the same sentence. So the only result of the decision of the Supreme Court will be delay for Brown and expense to the County of Schuylkill. Besides there were more hangings to come including those of nine Molly Maguires-- six on June 21, 1877, and one each on June 11, 1878, December 18, 1878, and January 16, 1879. The hangings had just begun.