John Van Alstine was (incompetently) hanged two hundred years ago today for murdering Schoharie County, N.Y., deputy sheriff William Huddleston — whom he bludgeoned to death in a rage when Huddleston turned up to execute a civil judgment forcing the sale of Van Alstine’s property to service a debt. The man acknowledged having a ferocious temper.

“It is not a year since I stated in Judge Beekman’s presence, (and, I stated it as the firm conviction of my mind), that there were two things I should never come to — the state’s prison and the gallows,” the confessed murderer mused in his public reflections, below. “How often have these words occurred to me since the regretted 9th, and taught me the vanity of human boasting, and the weakness of human resolution, when opposed to long indulged passions.”

This document has also been transcribed here.

On this day..

• 1653: Anne Bodenham, "A pox on thee, turn me off"
• 1901: George Parker, drunk marine
• 1824: David Howe, bitter debtor
• 1875: Jesse Fouks, for murdering the Herndon family
• 2015: Four more in Pakistan, but not Shafqat Hussain
• 1330: Edmund of Woodstock, family man
• 1866: John Dunn, teenage bushranger
• 1875: Tiburcio Vasquez, California bandido
• 1906: Pyotr Schmidt, Sevastopol uprising leader
• 1945: Friedrich Fromm, Claus von Stauffenberg's executioner
• 1938: A pig, experimentally
• 1600: Linköping Bloodbath, the dawn of Sweden's glory