The Chenango and Unadilla Valleys Fifty Years Ago
by S.S. Randall
Chenango Telegraph, Norwich, NY, April 17, 1872
The Denison Tragedy
[In 1872] It is now nearly forty years since the Denison Tragedy occurred, and a brief recapitulation of some of the principal incidents of this event may not be found uninteresting in this connection.
George Denison and Reuben Gregory were, in the latter part of the year 1832, residents of the town of Columbus [Chenango Co., NY]--the latter as a member of the family of his father, Hamlin Gregory, a respectable inn keeper on the road between New Berlin and Columbus, about midway between the two. Denison was a young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven, of dissipated and disreputable habits, but an intimate friend and associate of young Gregory. On the day of the murder, Denison had visited the inn, as was his frequent habit, and having already drank freely, either there or elsewhere, was refused further supplies by the elder Gregory, who was in attendance on the bar. Upon this, he indignantly left, threatening dire revenge, but without indicating of what nature. The elder Gregory uniformly wore a large slouched hat, and was in the frequent habit of smoking a clay pipe. The younger Gregory never smoked, and wore an ordinary tall crowned hat. Unfortunately, however on the afternoon of that day, he was suffering under a violent attack of tooth ache, and after having resorted to various remedies without obtaining relief, had been advised to try the effect of tobacco. Taking up, filling and lighting a pipe, and hastily seizing upon his father's slouched hat, he passed into an adjoining room, which opened upon a wood shed to the north, sat down in a chair immediately fronting the door leading into the shed, which stood open, pulled his hat over his eyes, and commenced smoking. By this time the sun was down and the evening twilight settling in. Denison, in the mean time, had gone home, loaded his gun with a charge of shot, intending only, as he persisted up to the last moment on the gallows, in asserting "to pepper old Gregory's legs." Stealing along in the deepening gloom of the evening he entered the wood shed, and seeing, as he supposed, the elder Gregory, seated in his accustomed attitude, enjoying his pipe, he deliberately aimed his deadly weapon and fired. The charge of shot entered the heart of the unfortunate son, passed through his body, and lodge in the adjoining wall. There can be no doubt from the shot itself, and from subsequent revelations on the part of Denison, that he did aim as well as in his excited condition he was able, at the legs of his victim, whom he clearly supposed to be the elder Gregory. But neither of these circumstances, of course, constituted any legal or valid defense. He was found skulking, early on the following morning, in the neighboring fields, where he had evidently spent the night, arrested, examined and committed. He was visibly horrified on discovering the nature and extent of the tragedy he had enacted. Reuben Gregory was one of his best and most cherished friends, nor was he capable, in his wildest moments of delirium of harming a hair of his head. At the ensuing January Circuit, held by Judge Monell, he was indicted for murder, and placed upon his trial. The public excitement was at its highest pitch. The father of the murdered youth was well-nigh insane, and was scarcely able, in his excitement and mental agony, to give a connected statement of the melancholy catastrophe. Mr. Cook and myself, as counsel for the prisoner, ineffectually, of course, endeavored to establish the usual defense of insanity, and to create in the minds of the jury a "reasonable doubt" of willful murder, as set up in the indictment. The modern practice of trying the Grand Jury itself as a preliminary proceeding, and of scrutinizing the exact mental volition of the accused at the precise moment of the crime, had not then penetrated to the Chenango tribunals of justice. Denison, of course, [was] convicted and sentenced to death. No Judge Pratt, of Brooklyn, was to be found, to allow a "bill of exceptions," and none was so much as dreamed of. A strong effort was made to induce Gov. Marcy to commute the sentence to imprisonment for life, under the peculiar circumstances of the case; but without success. The governor gently and sympathizingly, but firmly declined to interpose, and left the miserable convict to his fate.
The old Court House was found utterly incapable either of accommodating or even supporting the weight of the immense crowd who flocked to the trial; and an adjournment was had to the Presbyterian Chruch, in the immediate vicinity, the body, aisles and galleries of which were speedily filled to suffocation. A large platform below the pulpit had been hastily erected on the tops of the center pews, for the accommodation of the Court and its officers, the bar, jury and witnesses. The prisoner took his seat by the side of his counsel, and manifested the most intense interest in the progress of the trial. The frightful panic which occurred. at the opening of the defense as recently described in the Telegraph, thoroughly tested the strength of the workmanship of the building. Had there been the least flaw in its firm foundation, most [of] this floor to the lofty ceiling, the entire superstructure must have given way from the fearful pressure and the mad struggle to attaint the street, and thousands must have been buried in its ruins. Those occupying the platform had no possibility of escaping, surrounded as they were on every hand by the surging crowd. Many swung themselves from the upper windows in the galleries; and above and below and all around perfect bedlam furiously raged for at least half an hour. Meantime not a joist nor a board gave way; and the spacious edifice was again speedily filled; and honest Joseph Marsh in the adjoining yard, who had been the innocent and unconscious cause of the mighty uproar, quietly resumed his chopping, which had been mistaken for the cracking of the walls.
To be Continued
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