A Murder in Salem

[Robin Landseadel]

In 1830, a brutal crime in Massachusetts riveted the nation—and  
inspired the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne
By E.J. Wagner
On the evening of April 6, 1830, the light of a full moon stole  
through the windows of 128 Essex Street, one of the grandest houses in  
Salem, Massachusetts. Graced with a beautifully balanced red brick  
facade, a portico with white Corinthian columns and a roof balustrade  
carved of wood, the three-story edifice, built in 1804, was a symbol  
of prosperous and proper New England domesticity. It was owned by  
Capt. Joseph White, who had made his fortune as a shipmaster and trader.

A childless widower, White, then 82, lived with his niece, Mary  
Beckford (“a fine looking woman of forty or forty-five,” according to  
a contemporary account), who served as his housekeeper; Lydia Kimball,  
a domestic servant; and Benjamin White, a distant relative who worked  
as the house handyman. Beckford’s daughter, also named Mary, had once  
been part of the household, but three years earlier she had married  
young Joseph Jenkins Knapp Jr., known as Joe, and now lived with him  
on a farm seven miles away in Wenham. Knapp was previously the master  
of a sailing vessel White owned.

That night, Captain White retired a little later than was his habit,  
at about 9:40.

At 6 o’clock the following morning, Benjamin White arose to begin his  
chores. He noticed that a back window on the ground floor was open and  
a plank was leaning against it. Knowing that Captain White kept gold  
doubloons in an iron chest in his room, and that there were many other  
valuables in the house, he feared that burglars had gained access to  
it. Benjamin at once alerted Lydia Kimball and then climbed the  
elegant winding stairs to the second floor, where the door to the old  
man’s bedchamber stood open.

Captain White lay on his right side, diagonally across the bed. His  
left temple bore the mark of a crushing blow, although the skin was  
not broken. Blood had oozed onto the bedclothes from a number of  
wounds near his heart. The body was already growing cold. The iron  
chest and its contents were intact. No other valuables had been  
disturbed . . .


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/A-Murder-in-Salem.html?c=y&page=1#ixzz13DmRgdb6