Westmoreland County PA Archives News.....Hanging in Westmoreland County July 13, 1872
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Donald Buncie http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008389 September 26, 2022, 2:58 am

The Cambria Freeman. (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938 July 13, 1872
A correspondent in a late number of the Pittsburgh Lender ridicules the prediction
of the only white man ever hung in Westmoreland county, and concludes that it will
be broken in the case of the young man who lately poisoned his companion at
Overington. Our object in this article is to correct some erroneous ideas he has put
forth, and give some facts, personally known to us in our youth, that have never
been published. It was either in 1830 or 831 that Evans was hung, and, as was
generally believed, innocently. He was a workman on the construction of the
Pennsylvania Canal, and was in old "Molly Marron's" shanty, below Bolivar, where a
game of cards was going on, when a bit of a ruction arose. Of course it was a "free
fight," and Evans, in order to protect himself, picked up an iron fire shovel, and
as one of the belligerents came at him, drew it back over his shoulder, to
intimidate his adversary, so he alleged, when it struck a man behind him, who fell
with his head on an iron pot, receiving injuries from the latter which proved fatal.
This was the "head and front of Evans' offending." He was tried, convicted of murder
in the first degree, and executed. 
There were seven witness against him, all of whom he alleged swore falsely. On the
scaffold he most solemnly protested his innocence, and there and then predicted that
there would never be another man hung in Westmoreland county, and that every one who
swore falsely at the trial would meet with violent deaths. That is over forty years
ago, and although the most cold-blooded murders have been committed in that county
since, none of the guilty have paid the death penalty. Hugh Corrigan, who murdered,
quartered and burnt his wife on a log heap, and admitted to having killed a man in
Ireland, after a most exciting trial was convicted and sentenced to be hung, but
verified Evans prediction by committing suicide in his cell, or being poisoned, as
it was shrewdly suspected, to keep him from making a confession that would implicate
others in better standing. A boy that deliberately shot his father in Ligonier
township; Hill, that stapped to death Foster, conductor of Johnstown accommodation
train; Ward and Gibson, and a host of other guilty or capital crimes, whose names we
cannot recall have escaped the gallows in one way or another, until at this day
Evans, in his own land, is accredited a prophet. As to the other part of the
prophecy, we believe the parties are all dead, and in the manner predicted. Frank
Marron was the principal witness. We were raised within a mile of the scene of the
tragedy, and knew the Marrons well. Old Molly was a character. A short time after
Evans was hung, Frank was working in a quarry, and was blown up, losing an eye and
disabling one arm for life. His watch was found on the limb of a tree, but his hat
was never found, and old Molly said that "if Frank never went to heaven, his hat
did." Frank was a man of more than ordinary calibre, was highly social and made and
retained many friends; but his life was singularly checquered. He made, to our
knowledge, five miraculous escapes from death, and was finally killed on Plane 10 of
the old Portage Railroad, while trying to jump from one section of his boat to the
other. [We are assured by a gentleman fully cognizant of the facts that this
statement is incorrect. The injuries which caused Marron's death were received while
he was in quest of an old chip hat worth less than ten cents, which had blown from
his head while he was ascending the Plane on the first section of his boat, and
which he went after and was about picking up when the second section, then being
drawn up the Plane, knocked him down and ran over him.- Ed. Freeman] He was terribly
mangled, but lived some twenty-four hours afterwards in the most intense pain, it
requiring four stout men to hold him in bed. One of these, Mr. John Biglin, told us
that he seemed to be possessed of the devil. His curses were fearful. He, Biglin,
hoped that "God might spare him such another night." One of the other witnesses was
killed by lightning, another was kicked by a horse, and from the effects died, one
went blind etc. Evans was the first and only white man ever hung in that county, and
we confidently believe he will be the last. In our "Pittsburgh; Past and Present,"
we gave the particular of the hanging of an Indian there when Pittsburgh was a part
of Westmoreland county; the first man hung by the order of law west of the
mountains. The two constitute Westmoreland county's record of capital punishment,
and are likely to. - Phila. Sunday Dawn

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