Strange Doings in Pharsalia
Chenango Union, June 1, 1864
We have been furnished from a respectable source with a few particulars of some strange doings that have recently taken place in the town of Pharsalia, this county [Chenango Co., NY], which we think are worth relating for the benefit of the public.
Mrs. Sanford Dudley, whose husband has had the misfortune on several occasions to "come in collision with the laws," sometime in April last returned to Pharsalia after a short absence, bringing with her a bright, smart-looking girl, about sixteen years of age. Mrs. Dudley, it is reported, soon after pointed out to the girl a farm belonging to Mr. Joseph Rathbone, one of the neighbors, and occupied by him, telling her it belonged to her son Enoch, who was about to take possession, and that Rathbone was going to move off. This was clearly said with a view of working the young man into the good graces of the girl, the old woman being ambitious to make for her hopeful son a good match. The maneuvering of the "managing mamma" in this instance, as in many others, was crowned with complete success. Not long after settling Enoch up as a landholder, Mrs. Dudley went in person after Elder Lawton, of the same town, to come and tie the knot that was to make the loving twain one. The Elder came, and though he had his suspicions excited by something strange in the affair, they were not sufficiently aroused to prevent his doing the job. When he asked if any one had any objections to the marriage taking place, it is stated that Mrs. Dudley answered that none of the girl's friends were there to object, and if they were they wouldn't.
A few days after the ceremony, almost before the honeymoon had begun to wane, the bride, like another Pauline questioning Claude Melnotte, began to manifest anxiety concerning her future home. What she wanted to know was, in plain prose, when Rathbone was going to move off the farm, so that they could go to keeping house. It was then that the trick of the ambitious mother-in-law came out; it was then for the first time that Enoch became aware that he was supposed to be the possessor of broad acres, and all the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging. As soon as the bride learned the true state of the case, though so complying before, she flew into a terrible passion, and vowed that with Enoch she would live no longer!
And Enoch! What of him? Did he suffer? Did he weep? Did he rave? Was he distraught with hopes blasted, love scorned, the world's mockery, and the hard fate of a breaking heart? Oh, no; but with a cruelty more refined and less bloody than Bluebeard's but equally severe, he sold his young and disconsolate bride--sold her truly and in fact for six shilling to an old man of sixty, named Ellsworth! This transaction is not supposed to have been exactly legal, as it lacked one of Old Abe's internal revenue stamps to make it good; but the wife resisted it, to her honor be it said, on higher and better grounds than that. Though guarded through the night by the vendor on one side of her couch, and the vendee on the other, she resolutely refused to be transferred according to the contract. In the morning, the old man, weary with watching, and perhaps disgusted with the freaks of women, sold her back to the husband at an advance of twenty-five cents--sold her for one dollar--a speculation that partly consoled him for being fruitlessly broken of his night's rest. But this little transaction also lacked the formality of a revenue stamp, and therefore probably could not be enforced in law. The girl moreover refused to be turned over in this instance any more than in the other, and with such of her scuses as she could conveniently gather up, left the Dudleys and took up her abode with Nuck Burrows, of the same locality, where she yet remains. Nuck is a gentleman of the Jemmy Twitcher style, and has heretofore dealt largely in articles belonging to other people, and has served the State one term in a certain institution at Auburn. In going form Dudley's to Burrows', therefore, she hardly improved the moral atmosphere by which she was surrounded at the former place.
Now for the unfortunate girl. There is something mysterious in her coming to Pharsalia in company with the Dudleys, who, as may be supposed, are a hard set. It is also not a little singular that Mrs. Dudley, unless there is something in the girl's condition in life to account for it, should have manifested so much interest in having her marry her (Mrs. D's) son, who is yet but a boy. Her name is stated to have been Bates, and it is given out that she is from Brookfield, Madison county; but the girl intimates that that is not her name, and that she has been stolen. After the marriage she wanted her husband to take her home to get her clothes, but Mrs. Dudley insisted that she hadn't any. In person she is rather large and fleshy, and seems possessed of ordinary intelligence, though her conduct is wholly at variance with any such idea. In some respects she is not unlike the Esther Parks of Madison county, who disappeared about the time this girl came to Pharsalia, and who is stated to be crazy, though her insanity is not always easy to detect. We should not be surprised to learn that they are one and the same person Our informant states that she now professes the desire to kill herself, and begs of those who see her to get her poison for that purpose. Taken all together, it is a strange case.
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