Main Street Murder and Mayhem
Introduction: On a moonless Halloween night in 1864, two angry men exit a saloon, face each other just a few paces apart, draw their pistols and fire away. The next day, a riotous crowd gathers to watch another violent spectacle of flying fists and a flashing knife.
These were not events taking place in the lawless Old West, however. They happened on Main Street in Washington, just a few paces from the county courthouse.
It was a time – not unlike today – of deep political division and when gunfire in the streets was all too common.
The four-part serial story that begins today and continues weekly through July 23 is based on research done over the past several years by Mark Tomazin, who collected old newspapers, letters and documents about these events that occurred a week before the reelection of Abraham Lincoln.
The story was written by A. Parker Burroughs, who retired as executive editor of the Observer-Reporter in 2014. He is an author whose books include “Washington County Murder & Mayhem” and “True Murder Mysteries of Southwestern Pennsylvania,” both published by The History Press.
All the events in the story are true, and all of the words spoken by the characters are their own, as recorded in a transcript of a coroner’s inquest and in sworn testimony at trial.
Chapter one
Shafts of fiery light from the setting sun cut through the narrow spaces between buildings and spilled across Main Street on this All Hallows Eve, Oct. 31, 1864. A chill, swirling wind kicked up dust from the Borough of Washington’s main thoroughfare, rough with rock and lumps of manure. Two men walked south down the hill toward the center of town. One of them, Robert Latimer Morrow, 31, was wearing a plug hat and an unbuttoned black overcoat, a revolver belted around his waist.
At the same time, three men were walking north toward the Mansion House, a hotel and saloon at what is now the southeast corner of Main and Chestnut streets. As the groups neared each other, Morrow, speaking to his companion and then laughing, pulled a large door key out of the pocket of his overcoat and pointed it menacingly at the other men. One of them, William Johnson, but known to everyone as “the sheep man,” lunged at Morrow and grabbed his arm.
“What are you doing?” Morrow demanded.
“Why, you have a pistol in your hand!” Johnson cried.
“No, I haven’t!” answered Morrow, who then struck Johnson across the face with the key, dropping him to the street.
Morrow and his companion swaggered in the direction of the courthouse while the sheep man, a lump rising on his cheekbone, and his companions hurried into the Mansion House bar.
Meanwhile, a few blocks south of the courthouse on Main Street, John Lennox, 44, was sitting in John Brady’s meat shop, sewing leather patches onto his pants. This was for the purpose of husking corn, he told Brady. Some boys came into the shop and asked for help raising a pole. Lennox and Brady obliged. Afterward, Lennox helped carry a ladder to Brady’s stable, then as darkness descended, walked up the street, past the courthouse, the sheriff’s residence and the Fulton House hotel, past Smith’s new Ironfront building and all the shops at the center of town, to the Mansion House.
Lennox was drinking there with his friends Bill Steep, Woods Little and Bill Wiles when they noticed Johnson’s wound.
“The sheep man commenced telling that Bob Morrow had hit him with a key,” a witness would later testify. “Some one of them asked the sheep man to come and go along and find Morrow, but the sheep man did not want to go, saying Morrow had a pistol. They said that did not make any difference. Lennox, Steep, Little and Wiles went into the parlor with the sheep man, where they remained about 10 minutes. Afterwards, I started after them.”
As Lennox and his friends marched south on Main Street, a few other men fell in behind them, making a small crowd.
Trouble was in the making, and trouble was – for the residents of this sleepy town in the middle of farming county – entertainment.
A volatile atmosphere
Trouble was nothing new in the town of 3,500 or so in that time before discovery of large reservoirs of natural gas brought it steel and glass manufacturing, prosperity and growth. The Civil War had dragged on for three-and-a-half years, taking the lives of so many of its young men and creating a deep political divide among these people living just above the Mason-Dixon Line.
The atmosphere on this last day of October was particularly tense with the presidential election just eight days away. Abraham Lincoln was running for reelection as the candidate of the National Union (Republican) Party against George B. McClelland, the Democratic nominee. Many Democrats – also known as Copperheads – were fed up with the war and wanted to see a cease-fire and negotiation with the rebel states. Union backers claimed the Copperheads wanted “peace at any cost” and that their unwillingness to pursue victory was tantamount to endorsing slavery.
Neither side held a majority, as evidenced by the local elections held two weeks earlier. Even though the Union party’s candidate for sheriff of Washington County, Edmund R. Smith, had won the vote, 4,536 to 4,215, the Copperheads were claiming that their man Alexander Wishart was the new sheriff because most soldiers’ votes had yet to be counted.
Tempers were hot, enflamed by the borough’s two main weekly newspapers. The Washington Reporter and Tribune supported Lincoln and the Republicans, while The Washington Review and Examiner took up the Copperheads’ banner.
The temperance movement was gathering momentum at the time, and for good reason. Alcohol was virtually unregulated, and saloons lined both sides of Main Street from one end of town to the other.
A Unionist rally
No moon illuminated the sky that Halloween night. Republican men had gathered for a rally at the courthouse. “Although the sky was dark and rather unpromising, the spacious Court room was well filled,” The Reporter and Tribune recounted. U.S. Rep. George V. Lawrence addressed the crowd of Union supporters, and according to the newspaper, “foreshadowed the speedy overthrow of the rebellion and the utter defeat of the party that prepared to make terms with traitors in arms.”
Shortly after 7 o’clock, while Lawrence was still at the podium, Robert Morrow left the campaign event and wandered across Main Street to the Franklin Inn, better known as Coogle’s.
“Mr. Morrow came into my house,” Jacob Coogle would later testify. “He treated one or two men and drank with them, saying that he was the only Republican that would come into a crowd of Democrats and drink a toast to Lincoln. John Wolf said he would drink a toast to Father Abraham and Morrow treated him.”
Morrow then left the bar but returned 15 minute later. “He took another glass of ale,” Coogle testified, “and then he and my brother William got into an argument about politics.”
By the time John Lennox reached the intersection of Main and Beau streets, nine or 10 men were following him. People congregated in front of the Fulton House, which is where the Trust Building now stands, and watched the group march past with interest, and the anxious among them, sensing trouble, retreated indoors.
A mixture of alcohol, political vitriol and gunpowder was about to explode.
Next: A deadly showdown