WORKING STIFFS

“No bread sometimes, and never any rest;

With taxes, soldiers, children, and a wife,

Creditors, forced toil oppressed, 

He is the picture of a man unblessed.”- Death and the Woodcutter by Jean de La Fontaine, Fables 1668-1692

   For centuries, Osterhouts and Jennings have landed on both sides of the law and the pulpit. I tend to work the two from as many angles as possible. Gideon Osterhout was a sworn constable during the famous kidnapping of presidential candidate, Timothy Pickering, during the Pennamite Wars in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. Upon Pickering’s release, the man who was to become President George Washington’s Secretary of State in 1795, Timothy Pickering, personally thanked and recommended Constable Gideon Osterhout for a $100 reward for capturing the fifteen year old kidnaper, Aaron Kilborn. Writing to the Governor of Pennsylvania, Pickering explained,  “I wish well to Osterhout for his steady attachment to Government, and because he has formerly suffered for it, from some of the gang who took me…”

   The teenage desperado, Kilborn, told the judge that he was about to give himself up to the authorities anyways and, in his humble opinion, Constable Osterhout was nothing more than his ride to jail. If anybody deserved the $100 in reward money it was he. Aaron Kilborn’s  shameless declaration fell on deaf ears. Constable Gideon Osterhout got his bounty.

    A couple of generations later, in 1842, Thomas Osterhout (whose gold crowned, ebony cane is still on display in the Wyoming County Historical Society), was appointed the first sheriff of Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. This was years before the Pennsylvania county’s namesake, the state of Wyoming, was welcomed into the Union. There’s a story of one of Sheriff Osterhout’s more notorious prisoners, tried and convicted of a homicide charge involving a tree limb, who escaped under Sheriff Osterhout’s not so-watchful eye. The escapee was captured a year later in Mexico. Word was sent back to Pennsylvania for Sheriff Osterhout to come and retrieve his fugitive from a Mexican jail…..an epic journey. On their return, the pair made it as far as New Orleans, before the slippery prisoner escaped again. We Osterhouts seem to make better criminals than cops.

  In the New York State record of criminal executions, David Dunning’s occupation is listed as “farmer.” That would’ve been a big step up. Dunning was the true “woodcutter,” the unblessed everyman that was crucial for the vote, and feared by the upper classes. He was the “rabble,” a necessary evil, necessary for the patriarchal elite to attain and hold onto power and property, while they presented the illusion of equality to the masses. The capitalist power structure was aware from the start that if men like Dunning, free blacks, or slaves, joined forces, they could become dangerously unpredictable, and effectively deadly. Nothing was more terrifying than a man, or woman, with nothing to lose, coming for your fancy carriage with a torch and a pickax. 

   This is why David Dunning was begrudgingly placated, always kept one level above the woman, the slave, Indian, or free black in the societal pecking order. He was dangerous and malleable—at the same time. The poor white’s economic manipulation assured, as the botanist and acting Gov. of New York, Cadwallader Colden put it (as his effigy was being burned by the Sons of Liberty), the “rabble and the negro” should never join forces. The ruling class could go happily unmolested as long as there was always someone lower on the totem pole than the white, working poor.

  Jack and Dunning were perfect co-conspirators. Neither had much to lose. Depending on who you believe, Jack had killed before, making him a likely candidate for the job. Conklin and Teed plotted and manipulated, Hannah skulked and drank, while Jack and Dunning navigated the slippery terrain stretched out between; waiting for a distant, promised payday. It looked more like a poorly hatched scheme, accidentally brought to fruition, by a bunch of cross-purposed knuckleheads and buffoons, than a well planned conspiracy. That they actually succeeded in killing Richard Jennings was the most surprising outcome of all.