The Death of Martha Gregory - 1873

The Death of Martha Gregory

Bainbridge Republican, April 5, 1873

 

We take the following from the Norwich correspondence of the Utica Herald:

 

On Wednesday last, Mrs. Martha Gregory, aged 79, residing on Piano street [Norwich, Chenango Co., NY] with her step-daughter, Mrs. Hepzibeth Brown, sickened and died.  The day and hour for burial was fixed, and the officiating clergyman to perform the last sad offices engaged.  In the mean time, madam rumor, with her thousand busy tongues, put fourth the sly insinuations that all was not right, that there had been foul play "there was no doubt."  No doctor had been called.  This aged and infirm matron of three generations and more, tottering on the brink of time, did not go down to death secundum artem.

 

The premises were owned jointly by Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Brown,  and whichever outlived the other, it was understood, was to have possession and title full and clear.  Hepzibeth had been heard to say, so says dame gossip, that she would have that property before the first of April.  And then, she did not live with her husband--evidence of sterling womanly sense to those who knew the man.  At any rate, according to Miss Grundy, she was no better than she ought to be.  The funeral was postponed, relatives on their way to the house of the dead to bury the dead were informed of the situation of affairs, and the proper official notified that there was "a case for the coroner" on hand. Grave doctors gather around Martha Gregory's lifeless form, the stomach is removed and diligent search made to detect the potent and subtle agent of death.  But no poison is found. There is, to be sure, some irritation of the stomach such as would be likely to occur from the malady (cholera morbus) increased, perhaps, by the "Pain Killer," more likely to kill the patient than cure the disease, which had been administered with the kindest motives and the best interest.  A jury is impaneled.  Madam rumor, dame gossip, Miss Grundy and others of like feather are called, but when they come to make their statements under oath, they didn't know much of anything at all scarcely about it.  Some one else said thus, and so they didn't associate much with lady Brown, and knew nothing in particular against her.  Members of the best families on the street and nearest neighbors spoke in commendable terms of the relationship existing between Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Brown.  Others for years boarders in the same house, having ample opportunity to know whereof they affirmed, testified to the same thing.  The investigation toppled to its fall before the medical evidence was produced; this presented, the last prop was taken away and the entire proceedings went to the ground.

 

After lengthy sessions the jury, late Friday night gave a verdict in substance, that Martha Gregory came to her death from natural causes and not otherwise.  One or two inferences may be drawn from this case.   First, it is not safe to die except in the hands of a doctor.  Second, so precious are our surroundings, it is hardly safe to die at all.  A valuable lesson might be learned form this, if busy tongues and thoughtless brains could be made to heed and understand.  It is this:  Never cast imputations or insinuate aught against another, in so grave a matter, without a particle of proof, something more tangible than the merest vagaries of the mind, deceptive and false.

 

In this connection, I am led to a remark or two in regard to the "Gregory family," in which has been manifested a strange fatality indeed.  John Gregory, son of Martha Gregory's husband by a former wife, and brother of Mrs. Brown, was shot by Dennison in a fit of intoxication, in Columbus [Chenango Co., NY], over forty years ago.  The elder Gregory kept a tavern in Columbus at that time, and Dennison, being under the influence of liquor, in Dr. Jewett's middle stage of drunkenness, crazy-mad, and more drink being denied, sought revenge by firing a pistol through the window, the shot killing the son, instead of the father as was the murder's intent.  The first wife of Gregory senior, and a daughter, mother and sister of John, it may not be generally known to the Chenango county readers of the Herald, were poisoned accidentally, at the same time.  Certain innoxious herbs had been steeped in a copper vessel, and the tea, from too long standing in the same, freely partaken of, proved fatal to both.