The Murder of Mary Stannard - 1880

The Hayden Murder Trial

Chenango Union, January 22, 1880

The case of Rev. H.H. Hayden, tried for the murder of Mary Stannard, was submitted to the jury at New Haven [CT] on Friday  On Monday the jury was discharged, having failed to agree. The following is a brief history of the crime for which he was tried.

 

Mary Stannard, the victim, was an unfortunate girl.  Her great beauty had been her ruin, but she had been trying for some time past to gain the respect of her neighbors, and had recovered some of the cheerfulness that made her a great favorite in the little village until the final catastrophe came.  Her father, Charles Stannard, had tried to make a living on a rocky farm, and to bring up his children respectably  The little hamlet is ten miles from any railroad station, and there were few pleasures for young people there; so Mary went to Guilford [CT] three or four years ago.  She was, said a chronicler writing a week after the murder, a comely country girl, with brown hair and dark eyes, but her experience of life was so limited that she believed a rascal too readily.  Since that time until recently, she had quietly lived in service with her child.  After its birth, Mr. Studley, a farmer, living a little out of Guilford, employed her in his dairy, and made her life with him and his wife as pleasant as possible, and Mary used to say that with them she was beginning to be happy, or at least contended again.

 

But in August of '78, Mr. Studley saw that the girl was brooding over her troubles.  She did her dairy work as skillfully as ever, but she seemed to have lost heart.  Mr. Studley spoke to his wife about it, but that good lady could not discover its immediate cause.  Mary to their knowledge, was never away from home, except in the fields near the farm, and they could think of no recent occurrence that could trouble her.  At length, finding her crying one day, Mr. Studley asked her what the matter was, and after some urging she told him her story. She said that she had been led astray again, and that the result must soon again bring exposure.  Mr. Studley, mindful of Mary's previous fall, and of her struggle to retrieve the wrong, asked her what she would do--what he could do for her, and finally who the betrayer was.  His name she at first refused to tell, but finally, drying her eyes and with the first spark of indignation she had shown, she said the betrayer was her pastor, the Rev. Mr. Hayden.  Her manner was so truthful as to impress Mr. Studley, but he saw that such a charge would only add to the complication.  The girl then proceeded to detail the full circumstances.  She said that when she went to Mr Studley's pasture for water she had frequently met Mr. Hayden there, for the pasture adjoins his little farm.  The first meeting was accidental, but others followed, in which Mr. Hayden confessed his love, and Mary believed him, although he had a wife and three children.  Then came the criminal act.  After consultation with his wife, Mr. Studley decided that it would be best for Mary to go to her father in Rockland [CT], and Mr. Studley drove her over with her little girl.  To her sister Mary told her secret, but not to her parents.  To her sister she added that Mr. Hayden had promised to provide for her throughout the coming trouble.  But she wanted to see him again; she wanted to get some definite appointment.

 

About 11 o'clock on Tuesday, continues the  narrative to which we have referred, the Rev. Mr. Hayden stopped at the Stannard homestead and asked for a glass of water.  The spring was a long distance from the house; it is believed that he knew Mary would run, as she always did, to fetch it.  Instead of waiting at the house he followed her.  What passed between them there Mary never told.  She came back somewhat flushed, and only said to her sister that she had an appointment with Mr. Hayden and was going to meet him at the Whippoorwill Rock, a boulder so much larger than the many others laying around that has been given a separate name.  The rendezvous is a lonely place.  Swamps lie on one side of it and thick forests on the other.  Nearby is a pasture, so rough that only blackberries grow on it.  Immediately after dinner Mary took a pail and, tying a straw sunshade on her head, started down the road. The last that her people ever saw of her alive was the picture she made as she entered the woodland beyond the house, swinging her pail, with her bright calico dress flitting through the underbrush.

 

Her father thought it very strange when 3 o'clock came and Mary had not returned.  At 4 o'clock he began to get nervous and at 5 started for the blackberry pasture to look for her.  She was not there.  Then he hunted in earnest and called with all his power.  At length in crossing a little foot path, he thought he saw the bright colors of a dress some distance down and before he got to the object saw that it was Mary lying prone on the ground.  he called her, and she did not answer.  then he rushed down the path and saw at the first glance the wound in the neck.  It was not large--such a cut as a penknife might have made.  he seized her hands and they were stone cold. She must have been dead some hours.  Her arms were folded over her breast; her clothing was not disarranged, and there was not a sign of a struggle anywhere.  He ran back for help, and the neighbors whom he brought with him took the body home, and then looked carefully around for the weapon.  They could find none, but did observed such traces as led them to believe that the murder was committed elsewhere and then the body dragged to the bypath, and carefully arranged where found.

 

Some of the neighbors whispered among themselves that Mary had committed suicide, but others asked at once who folded her arms upon her breast, who struck her the blow on top of the head and stabbed her in the throat, and where did she get the bruises on her wrist.  Satisfied that it was murder, they first thought of tramps, but tramps are seldom seen there, and moreover there was no evidence of the other crime to commit which tramps sometimes murder.  Moreover in Mary's pocket there were found articles that suggested that she was about to commit a crime upon herself.  Then Mary's sister told the story of her sister's expected interview with the pastor and of  his alleged relations with the dead girl, and he was arrested for the crime.

Lowell, MA Daily Courier, May 4, 1885

Seven years have passed since the country followed with almost breathless interest the phases of one of the greatest murder trials in American history, that of Rev. Herbert H. Hayden at New Haven [CT], for the murder of the half-witted girl, Mary Stannard.  Four months of wrangling by ingenious counsel ended in a disagreement of the jury,  11 for acquittal, one for conviction, and Hayden was set at liberty.  Before the crime he had been preaching at the little Methodist church in Rockland, Ct., at $200 a year, and eked out a living by working as a carpenter at times.  After his discharge, the steward of the church, he reported, asked him to return, but he felt that, with the divided state of public opinion in his congregation, his days of usefulness were ended.  he located in New Haven [CT], and for years has had a small carpenter shop in the rear of Orange street.  He has never prospered.  A few Methodist friends gave him employment but the people of New Haven, as a rule, withheld their patronage. The church, it is said, long since closed its doors in his face, and he was left to struggle at his trade.  he has almost passed from public memory, and his name is only recalled at this time by a mere paragraph in one of the New Haven papers. A pitiful paragraph it is, telling in brief words the struggle the man has endured for seven long years.  Any ordinary industrious mechanic in that time would have "got ahead" as the New England phrase goes, but this paragraph notes an attachment of the ex-clergyman's property for the paltry sum of $85.  And to settle this, his note was not received until indorsed bye his wife, who has a small property. There was some talk, seven years ago, of another trial.  The people of New Haven county protested.  The first trial had cost $30,000 at least, and the matter has been dropped forever.   Hayden in practically free, and the mystery of the terrible Rockland murder has never been solved.   Probably it never will be.