1852: Ann Hoag and Jonas Williams
July 30th, 2012 Headsman
On this date in 1852, a white woman and a black man — no connection between them — were hanged on an upward-jerking gallows in Poughkeepsie, New York.
31-year-old (though she looked 22, said smitten newsmen) Ann Hoag was a foundling who’d been raised by an adoptive family, then married a local farmer in a union that featured at least five children, financial loss, and a good deal of unhappiness. The sequence of causation among those mutually convivial characteristics is left for the reader’s imagination. Eventually — the New York Times (July 31, 1852) is most piquant on this — succumbing to the thrall of a younger lover, “the ill-starred woman plunged into misery and degradation, renounced virtue, reputation, husband, and children, until at last she murdered her husband” with arsenic and eloped with her paramour to Bridgeport.
Luckily for Ann, her brief summer of carnal liberty sufficed to quicken her belly, with the result that her delicate condition bought her a few extra months of life. On April 18, 1852, she gave birth to a baby daughter, and sealed her own fate.
A most interesting scene occurred in the separation of the child from the unhappy mother, which none but a mother’s heart can conceive. It appeared as if the last prop of life, the very cords of the heart were being severed, when, with the most endearing caresses, amid tears and sobs, the mother looked for the last time on that innocent babe, which since its birth had unconsciously shared her solitude and been her solace. As it passed forever from her sight, she exclaimed — “Now let them execute me — I have nothing to live for — one by one they have dragged my children from me.” (Albany Journal, Aug. 5, 1852)
Although the faithless wife left a 70-page statement implicating her lover William Somers, that gentleman was acquitted in October of 1852 on a charge of accessory to murder.
Jonas Williams, Ann Hoag’s partner upon the gallows, was much less the sighed-over. Williams committed a “fiendish outrage” upon his 11-year-old stepdaughter, killing her.
On this day..
- 1680: David Hackston, Cameronian - 2020
- 1819: Robert Watkins, Hang Day Fayre - 2019
- 1913: August Sternickel, terror - 2018
- 1789: Giovanna Bonanno, la Vecchia dell'Aceto - 2017
- 1943: Marie-Louise Giraud, Vichy abortionist - 2016
- 1830: Charles Wall - 2015
- 1746: Francis Towneley, of the Forty-Five - 2014
- 1888: One Newfoundland, for Thomas Alva Edison - 2013
- On the late and unlamented malware warnings - 2012
- 1915: Charles Becker - 2011
- 1419: The (first) Defenestration of Prague - 2010
- 1540: Three Papists and Three Anti-Papists - 2009
- 1811: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, for Mexican independence - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,History,Murder,New York,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Sex,USA,Women
Tags: 1850s, 1852, ann hoag, arsenic, family, jonas williams, july 30, love triangle, poison, poisoner, poughkeepsie
