The murder of Civil War veteran Joseph Riley Farnsworth in 1875 is an oft-forgotten story in Colrain’s history, said Prentiss Crosier, a historian with the Catamount Hill Association.
While returning from a trip to Greenfield where he had had his semi-annual medical examination to receive his disabled veterans benefits, Farnsworth was attacked by two young men, Harry Davenport and Daniel Dwight, who believed Farnsworth had money.
For Crozier, and for many in the audience at the Coleraine Historical Society program June 13, this history is personal. As he explained that Farnsworth was buried in West Branch Cemetery, Crozier paused to note that it was the same cemetery where he plans to be buried when he dies. At another point in the presentation, Crozier listed several jurors by name, and a man in the audience raised his hand to say he was a direct descendant of one of the jurors.
“I grew up seeing this stuff,” Crocier said in an interview, “but I didn’t know this story. I was middle-aged before I knew this story. I’m a descendant of people who immigrated there. [on Catamount Hill]”My family came to Colrain in 1780.”
The Stacey Barn, where the Coleraine Historical Society is hosting the event, was packed, some spectators standing at the back, and warm evening light filtered into the open barn as Crocier detailed the history of the murder and its aftermath.
Twelve days after Farnsworth’s burial, his body was exhumed. Because there was no medical examiner in Colrain at the time, a jury examined the body themselves. Crosier noted that one local paper reported that Farnsworth’s “skull was fractured from ear to ear, from blows sustained by Davenport and Dwight.”
After the murders, the perpetrators fled north, Crosier said. They walked through the Heath and into North Adams. A $500 reward was offered to anyone who found them and up to 50 men have searched Colrain Woods, “without success,” Crosier said.
In Vermont, the two men boarded a train for New York, where they accidentally became separated. Davenport was arrested, and five days after the murder, Dwight returned to Colrain, where he was also arrested.
Dwight and Davenport were imprisoned in Greenfield, but one day Dwight and four other prisoners escaped.
“It was like a classic movie escape,” Crosier said, adding that he wasn’t sure how exactly it worked, but that he used a rope and a sheet to escape through the ceiling.
The men made it to High Street, where they left footprints in the snow, and the next day Dwight was found under a hemlock tree in Bernardston.
“Just 14 hours after their escape, they were back in the hands of the police,” Crosier said. That means all but one of the escapees have been recaptured. Crosier said he found no evidence that the inmate was ever recaptured.
Both Dwight and Davenport were sentenced to hard labor in prison for the rest of their lives.
Crocier said reports differed about the exact ages of the perpetrators at the time of the crimes, but it was generally agreed that one was 17 and the other 18.
Dwight was eventually released from prison for good behavior, but the Boston Herald reported that Davenport had become insane. According to Crosier, Davenport died in 1939 and was buried without a tombstone, “in a state of deliberate forgetfulness that mirrors his place in the history of Catamount Hill.”
