GIGS ON THE BOOKS

“My duty is indeed delicate, painful and important; but yours is much more so.”- Henry G. Wisner addressing the jury in the Jack Hodges trial.

      I don’t have any pictures of my great grandfather Andrew Osterhout. This 1895, vernacular photo of a man, boy and his dog fishing above the woolen mill, shows the spot where my grandfather Wray and his brothers and sisters grew up. This is what the Wallkill river looked like five years before Wray Osterhout was born. It hasn’t changed much. Fifteen years later on a 1910 census form my great grandfather’s occupation is listed as a “seamster at the woolen mill.” Under the column “whether able to read or write,” “no" was written twice. As far as my Osterhout branch goes, I am only two generations removed from illiteracy. 

    It is a powerful connection to be from such a large family stuck in one place for so long. I grew up across the river from the exact spot where the threesome in the photo were fishing. My grandfather and I fished, trapped and prowled the river together when I was a boy, and there were plenty of Osterhouts down river in Walden. He always said we weren’t related to the Walden Osterhouts, but now I know we are. l can come across kin I never knew I had traveling from farm, to bar, to church, to jail cell, any day of the week. We have a vast archipelago of family islands, a clan—too big to keep track of and too indifferent to care. Some are nice people, others are still in jail.

     In March of 1819 (exactly 200 years ago) all eyes were turned towards the court of Oyer and Terminer in Goshen, NY. A trial was in progress that would decide the fates of three white men, a black man and a white woman. No one questioned that Jack Hodges fired the shot that laid Dick Jennings out, taking a four-fingered slice from his hat and one ear off in the process. He freely admitted to this. When asked in court how he would plead to the murder, Jack Hodges (under Martin Van Buren’s direction) stood mute. A plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf by the NY Atty. Gen., who nodded affirmatively at the accused. Jack Hodges was the state’s star witness in prosecuting the first “murder for hire” case in NY, and he had to be handled carefully. Each step was highly choreographed. Martin Van Buren waved his hand, pointing to his witness and approached the bench, confident his stock was on the rise.

     Before the bar stood Jack Hodges, James and Hannah Teed, David Conklin and David Dunning. Beside them stood their attorneys. Each defendant had been accused of murder and accessory to it in the killing of Richard Jennings. And this is what makes this trial so unusual; not the murder per se, but the conspiracy to commit. With the promise of a large sum of money to the would-be assassins Dunning and Hodges, these three other individuals were accused of “conspiring to” murder before and after the fact. With the promise of nothing but the end of a rope, Jack Hodges was talking and filling in the blanks. Murder was rare enough—conspiracy hadn’t been heard of since the Revolution. All throats were cleared and stones removed from ears.

Dr. Samuel S. Seward sworn

By the D.A.:

Q. Are you a surgeon?

A. I am.

Q. When did you first see the body of Richard Jennings?

A. On Tuesday the 29^th of December last.

Q. Did you particularly examine his wounds?

A. The one in his forehead I examined.

Q. Please describe it to the court and jury.

A. It was a triangular wound that seemed to have been produced by a violent blow.

Q. How deep was the wound?

A. I put my thumb into the wound and was certain that the skull was broken.

Q. Would the wound in the forehead produce death?

A. It would.

Cross by Henry G. Wisner:

Q. Would death have followed the shot wound?

A. I think not.

Q. Was the wound in the forehead the cause of death?

A. I think it was.

Q. Could such a wound be inflicted and not produce death?

A. I think not.

      Apart from being the surgeon who stuck his thumb in Dick Jennings’ frozen skull, Doctor Samuel Sweezy Seward was also a rich local farmer and magistrate. My great…. grandparents Gideon and Sophia Jennings were close enough to the Sewards to name one of their sons Samuel Seward Jennings. Dr. Seward was also the executor of their estate. These were not distant relationships. Yet, by my grandparents’ generation, the Montgomery Jennings and the Florida Sewards, were no longer close family. The Sewards had been world famous since the 1860’s and the Jennings gladly faded into the scenery. We have no claim to family interaction with historical characters, only connection by blood. I’ve never met a Seward or a Walden Osterhout, but I can pin them on the tree.

    Jack Hodges is a different kind of connection—a “fictive kinship.” I feel close to him also. Perhaps perversely so. He did shoot my uncle. But, there was more to Jack Hodges than met the eye. “Notwithstanding all his ignorance, vice and degradation, there was,” in Jack Hodges, “a native dignity and a noble carriage….though strikingly African, every feature and movement showed that he was originally fitted for a higher and better character…” So says the Sunday School primer that documented his trial. Jack Hodges had his champions. I’m starting to see why.