1849: Elisha Reese, suitor
1 comment September 7th, 2013 Headsman
A number of comment threads on this site attest that many accidental visitors to Executed Today are genealogy researchers turning up information about a famous ancestor. The Internet age is a true renaissance for genealogists; while it’s not this blog’s specific objective, it’s a happy side effect if we throw the odd ray of light on the very odd bits of a family’s history.
It’s in that spirit that we present this date’s profile of Elisha Reese, hanged before a reported 5,000 spectators on September 7, 1849 just outside the city limits of Macon, Ga.
As with many crimes, it was the news on everyone’s lips in its own day, but then passed rather quickly into obscurity. Elisha Reese, age 50, was rejected in his marriage suit by 60-year-old widow Ellen Pratt. The nature of their relationship is not known, but Reese took this badly enough that Ellen’s father, 90-year-old Revolutionary War veteran David Gurganus, swore out a peace warrant against his would-be son-in-law … and then Reese took the existence of this peace warrant with a downright vengeful fury.
For what happened next, click on through to the proper genealogist — and Gurganus descendant — who has researched this story already and posted it as a three-parter on her site, A Southern Sleuth.
On this day..
- 1833: Nils Narumseie, terror of Kanten - 2020
- 1619: Melchior Grodziecki, Istvan Pongracz and Marko Krizin, Jesuits - 2019
- 1952: Mustafa Khamis and Muhammad al-Baqri, Egyptian labor activists - 2018
- 1960: George Scott - 2017
- 1736: Captain John Porteous, riotously lynched - 2016
- 1732: Pompey, poisoner of James Madison's grandfather - 2015
- 1914: Seven retreating Frenchmen, with surprising results - 2014
- 1929: Constantine Beaver, Alaskan native - 2012
- 1768: Isaac Frasier, three strikes offender - 2011
- 2000: Lu Cheng, possible wrongful Taiwanese execution - 2010
- 1984: Ernest Dobbert, child abuser - 2009
- 1943: 186 prisoners at Plotzensee Prison - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Georgia,Hanged,History,Murder,Public Executions,USA
Tags: 1840s, 1849, david gurganus, elisha reese, ellen pratt, genealogy, macon, september 7
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