The Family Executioner
Steven R. Kravsow

 

The house is gone now. It sat on the south side of Sandy Lane, a beautiful two-storied colonial that proclaimed that its owner was a person of status, someone to be respected, maybe just a notch or two below such local colonial scions like Gideon Welles, Oliver Wolcott, or even Silas Deane. It was built in a style known as "five-four and a door". There were five windows upstairs, four windows downstairs, and a door in the middle. It was a quintessential example of Pre-Revolutionary War New England architecture and it was located in the sleepy onion growing town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, just a few miles south of Hartford.

But in the early hours of December 11, something terrible happened there. While his wife and four children dreamed their dreams, William Beadle, known to his friends and neighbors as an honest and forthright man, took an ax and hacked his wife and four children to death. Then, leaving a trail of bloody footprints as mute witness to the unfolding tragedy, he came downstairs where he placed a rambling collection of writings and a note on the table explaining why he had done this. The note begged the locals to be as calm about the circumstances as he was. Then he crossed the room and sat in a chair next to the dining room window where he carefully put a pair of pistols loaded with ball and powder into each ear and pulled the triggers, instantly killing himself.

Variations of this scene have become all too common in the past few years. We read about it in the newspapers. We see it on the newscasts. Headlines blare from supermarket tabloids while we shake our heads and wonder what events could possibly conspire in people's lives to drive them to commit such horrendous and terrible acts to their loved ones. It happens to the families of media superstars and it happens to average families. It happened in Jonestown and it happened in Waco. It happened in Wethersfield and it happens in anonymous towns all across the country, more often than we wish to know.

But this tragedy was different. This didn't happen last year. This nightmare was not taken out of today's headlines. William Beadle, husband to Lydia, and father to Ansel, Elizabeth, Lydia jr., and Mary took his family's lives, as well as his own, over two hundred years ago-- in 1782, not 2000.

How often have we passed through a colonial village or a sleepy town and imagined what it would be like to go back to those days, to simpler times and clearer values; to live our lives free from the stresses of modern society. But apparently the old times were not always good times.

The problems that overwhelmed William Beadle seem to be much the same then as they are for many, today. All the signs were there but nobody was looking. Only later, after the shock and the fury had ebbed did the people of colonial Wethersfield discover that William Beadle had been a deeply troubled man.

William Beadle spoke little of his life. He was known to be rather close-mouthed about his age, parentage, or early occupation. Only later did a picture of this tormented man emerge. He was a small man but he was considered to be handsome and he seemed to exude a certain charisma, his sharp eyes flashing with fierceness and determination as he discussed politics or the events of the day in his general merchandise store. It was said that he exhibited a tenacious nature, that once he made up his mind on an issue he was rarely swayed. He was praised as a man of high honor and integrity and he ran his retail business with scrupulous honesty.

William Beadle was born in a small town in Essex county, England, the son of an English gentleman who was important enough to have had access to the royal court. Throughout his youth, he was exposed to the fascinating people that frequented the court of George II and he began to internalize their lifestyles. He was a curious child who was perceived to be bright and inquisitive by nature, an avid reader with a thirst for knowledge at the start of the Age of Enlightenment.

Under his father's tutelage, young William joined one of the deist clubs that had sprung up across England and Europe as enlightened men began to question the role of God and the universe. They possessed faith rather than religion. They had little use for the trappings and ceremonies of traditional religions. Theirs was a burgeoning belief in a personal God-- based on rational thought and natural reason-- who guided one's actions. This belief would play a major role in the tragedy that would end the lives of the Beadles.

At the age of twenty-five, he sailed for the island of Barbados with the family of Charles Pinfold, Esquire, a friend of his father's, who was the governor of the island. He stayed there for six years where he managed to accumulate a tidy fortune of a few thousand pounds, due mainly to Pinfold's contacts. Armed with this money, he returned to England but stayed only long enough to buy merchandise that he would use to stock a store in the American colonies. In 1762 he arrived in New York City and immediately traveled to Stratford, Connecticut. Within a year, he moved to Derby, then on to Fairfield where he met Lydia who would become his wife.

Even less is known of Lydia who was only 32 years old at the time of her murder. She was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts into a family that was considered to be hard working and of sound character. Lydia was a small woman who possessed a gentle nature and a serenity that the locals found extraordinary. She was the counterpoint to her husband's zealous nature. While William carried an air of gentility, Lydia seemed sincere and unaffected. Her friends described her as a humble and soft-spoken woman.

She met William in Fairfield while visiting relatives. Soon they were courting. Before long they were married. In 1772 they moved to Wethersfield with their first child, a son named Ansel Lothrop Beadle, and a sum of 1,200 pounds, most of which William used to establish a country store.

At first their business prospered. The store was an immediate success. His extraordinary mix of merchandise soon attracted customers from Hartford, Rocky Hill and the surrounding towns. He even managed to advertise his wares in the Hartford Courant when in January of 1775 he exhorted the locals to purchase his tea before "...must all this be lost and wasted!"

But by the late 1770's his fortunes had begun to fade. Though he kept a well-stocked assortment of goods, he refused to grant his customers credit. He believed that you bought only the things that you could afford. Though he seemed to have little faith in his fellow man he had developed a great faith in his adopted country. He allowed his customers to pay for his merchandise with "the currency of the country"; Continental dollars. He believed deeply in the proverb that read, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".

When the American colonies proclaimed their independence from England in 1776, they realized they would need to raise money to defend themselves against the English army. A Continental Congress was formed to oversee the conduct of the war. Under their direction currency was issued to pay for the goods they required. But the Congress had no power to tax. They could only request the colonies to pay their fair share. Many colonies were slow to respond to their request and others paid litle at all. Soon, the Congress was forced to print more and more money to pay their mounting expenses without backing it in kind. Therefore, these Continental dollars that Beadle was accepting were rapidly losing their value. Before long, he began to experience difficulty properly re-stocking his merchandise as he, in turn, paid his creditors with the same Continental dollars that were rapidly losing their buying power. In business he preferred the sure thing of the here and now, but as his business failed he retreated more and more into the hereafter.

William Beadle was a man who was ahead of his time. Image was everything to him. He had grown up with the trappings of gentility and he had embraced them ever since his arrival in America over a decade earlier. But now as his business began to fail, he implemented an economic plan for his family that was designed to keep up the appearance of success to the outside world. He scrimped and saved, cut corners everywhere, and resolved to live a privately frugal life while scrupulously maintaining their public facade of retail success and moderate means. But, at the same time, he retained their maid-- to let her go would be to admit the unadmittable-- and continued to entertain his friends and neighbors as if nothing untoward was happening. It was only within the confines of his family that their secret remained. And it was there that his sickness grew.

Beadle's unfortunate experience with Continental currency during the war fueled his fears that wealth was transitory, and that at any time it could sprout wings and fly away-- despite all his vigilance. As his business continued to fade, Beadle retreated from painful reality and returned to the books of his formative years. The more he read the more he convinced himself that in his deist philosophy lay the ultimate solution to his problems. He became obsessed with the warped combination of false pride and false notions about religion. He was determined never to suffer the embarrassment of being thought by his friends, neighbors, and customers of being poor and dependent.

One of the rambling letters that were discovered the morning after the tragedy offers chilling insight into his emerging madness. He recognized that people suffered misfortune but it was there that his mind took a demented twist.


"If a man, who has once lived well, meant well, and done well, falls by unavoidable accident into poverty, and then submits to be laughed at, despised and trampled on, by a set of mean wretches as far below him as the moon is below the sun; I say if such a man submits, he must become meaner than meanness itself and I sincerely wish he might have 10 years added to his natural life to punish him for his folly."



William Beadle was not the only one to hold this belief. Almost two centuries later, Adolph Hitler viewed his demented world in much the same way as he exhorted German citizens to support the re-emergence of the Fatherland by taking on the "... gleam of the animal... and the power of the gun."

Looking back, friends and neighbors recognized some of the signs. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. There were indications that Beadle wanted to kill himself and the children for quite some time. His behavior began to change. His son Ansel often swam in the river near their house and neighbors often heard Beadle encouraging the boy to swim out into the deeper water where the currents were dangerous. He removed the lid on a well near his house which he had always scrupulously covered, since his three daughters ranged from ages 6-10. He told another that "it would give me no pain or uneasiness to follow my children to the grave." Acquaintances assumed he was speaking in jest.

And there was another disturbing thing known only to Lydia. In the last few months of their life, William had begun to take an ax and a gruesome collection of butcher knives to the bedroom each night. When Lydia questioned him about this frightening behavior, he told her that he was concerned about burglars.

On at least two occasions, Beadle tried to carry out his plan to kill himself and his children. Around the first of November, Lydia must have needed to get away from her husband for a time so she set out on a trip to Fairfield, Connecticut, intending to stay with relatives there. Beadle viewed this occasion as an opportunity sent from Heaven. He planned to do it while she was away since, at this point, he had not figured a way to include her in his bizzarre plan. But, for some reason, Lydia turned back at New Haven and arrived home ten days earlier than he had expected. William would have to wait. It was then that he decided to include Lydia in his plan.

In his madness, he claimed the right to take his children's lives because he had directly helped to create them. But Lydia was another matter. At first, he felt that he didn't have the same right to take her life since she was the child of another person. He did not consider her to be his property in the same manner as he regarded the children. But Lydia unwittingly provided her demented husband with the justification he desired. No doubt the strain of living with William's increasing dementia was taking its toll on her as well. In the last months of her life, Lydia became tormented by violent nightmares; preminitions which seemed to foretell her family's fate. Unfortunately, Lydia told her husband about them and in his deteriorating mental state, he viewed these dreams as divine messages from a personal God. Now he vowed to carry out her nightmares.

Lydia had been home for several days when William finally figured it out. It had been so simple that he had almost missed it. William reasoned that he had an obligation as head of the house not to leave her behind where she would then have to deal with recriminations-- alone. He determined that it would be a cruelty on his part to separate her from her family which was going on to a better place. It became his obligation as Lydia's husband and protector.

On November 17, Lydia dreamed that her husband wrote many papers which were stained with blood. And in the dream she saw a man drowning in his own blood from wounds that he had inflicted upon himself. Lydia was terrified. William understood the dream.

Between November 17 and Thanksgiving Lydia told him of two more dreams. She said they frightened her. The dreams were filled with violence carried out upon her family, but that at their conclusion, Lydia explained, she had been filled with relief. Hearing this, William Beadle was more convinced than ever that he now had all the justification he needed to kill her, too. Her death would provide her relief.

Thanksgiving night she had her most ominous dream in which her three daughters lay dead in the sun for a very long time. But the weather was cold and their bodies had eventually frozen. Upon hearing these latest dreams, Beadle was positively convinced that God was giving him another sign.

On December 10, which would turn out to be the family's last day on earth, Lydia went out for a walk. She met a neighbor who remarked that she looked upset. By now, Lydia had become overwhelmed by feelings of rapidly impending doom. Lydia was so distraught that she decided to confide in the woman that she had been "troubled with uncommon and frightful dreams..." and that during the night she "...dreamed violence had been offered her family and her children destroyed." The neighbor was equally upset upon hearing this but what followed must have sent chills through her. Lydia added, "Providence had judgments in store for my family, which he [is] about to inflict on them by some sweeping sickness, or in some awful manner." Less than twelve hours later, her fears would come true.

By now, Beadle had become increasingly out of touch with reality and in his emotional state, he interpreted Lydia's dreams as signs of his God's prophesy and that he was chosen to be God's instrument. Lydia, in turn, feared William which created a spiralling effect. Her fear of him manifested itself through her dreams. The more she would share them with William, the more he determined that it was the way things were meant to be. They fed into each other.

Beadle had come to believe that everyone dies anyway so why not do it voluntarily, he reasoned, thus choosing the time and the place. In his writings he believed that God would not punish anyone who was "...impatient to visit his God and learn His will from His own mouth, face to face..." He had taken the personal God concept of deism and put his own demented twist to it. He seemed to believe that moving from this world to the next was much like traveling from one country to another-- merely a question of logistics.

William Beadle decided that they would all leaving this world on the night of November 18th. He planned to kill them but first he needed a ruse to get rid of the maid who slept with the three young girls. So he wrote a letter to a friend in which he concocted an obscure, insignificant question. He told the maid to wait for an answer before returning, confident that this would give him the time he needed to carry out his hideous task. That evening he prepared a special dinner of oysters for his family. In another of his letters he stated, "I have prepared a noble supper of oysters, that my flock and I may eat and drink together, thank God, and die." Beadle did not consider this meal to be a last supper, but rather a meal of celebration. But it was not to be. The maid returned early and Beadle seemed to lose his nerve that night.

December 10th dawned clear and bright but as the day progressed clouds began to dot the sky. By evening the sky had turned overcast all but obscuring a nearly full moon. Still the temperature was pleasant due to the absence of a breeze. Beadle occupied himself all day while Lydia took a walk with her neighbor. The children, Ansel, Elizabeth, Lydia, jr., and Mary-- the youngest at age six-- did chores and played for a while unaware that they were spending their last hours on earth.

That evening, William and Lydia had entertained friends for dinner. It was necessary for him to keep up appearances, even to the very end. Looking back on the evening, their guests had detected no sign of anything amiss that might foretell the impending executions. Shortly after 9 P.M., they left amid William's protestations that they stay longer. But his protests were merely for show. As soon as they had left, he tucked in the children and gave everyone a final drink which was laced with a mild opiate to make his job easier. Then he and Lydia went to bed.

Some time shortly after midnight, he awakened the maid who slept in the girls' room. He told her to take a letter to the local physician who lived on the other side of town. He explained that Lydia had taken ill and that she should return with the doctor. He asked her if she understood? She did. He repeated the question twice more, each time with more agitation, which the maid attributed to William's concern for Lydia's sickness. But when the maid attempted to go to Lydia's room to check on her condition William restrained her, telling the maid that Lydia was resting and that she shouldn't be disturbed. In fact, Lydia was already dead. Like her children, she, too, had been drugged to make his job easier.

The unsuspecting maid, the last person to see them all alive, did as she had been instructed. She rode all the way across town and presented the note to the doctor. Its contents were horrifying. The note explained what Beadle had been doing back at the house. Upon reading the note the physician immediately grabbed his coat and raced out the door hoping he could get to the house in time. Within minutes they arrived. Everything seemed quiet. He could see the lamps illuminating the inside of the home. Maybe, he told himself, he had arrived in time to save the Beadle family.

He ordered the maid to remain outside and he knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He tried the door knob. It was unlocked. The doctor took a deep breath and went inside. The first person he saw was William slumped in his chair, blood and brains everywhere. The carnage had already taken place. He was too late. Blood was everywhere. He follwed the crimson trail of footprints upstairsdeading what he would find. Each in their rooms, Lydia, and the four children were dead.

William had watched the maid leave. Lydia had already been murdered and now it was time to head back upstairs to finish his grisly task. He returned to their bedroom and picked up his bloody ax and a large carving knife. Gently, he dragged Lydia to the edge of the bed so that she was half in and half out. He had struck her twice with the ax while she slept. The back of her shattered head touched the floor. Next he drew the carving knife and slit his wife's throat from ear to ear. It was harder than he thought. There was so much blood on the floor that he was having trouble remaining on his feet. But he had to complete the job. It was almost as if he could not stand the thought of bloodying any of the beds.

Next he entered Ansel's room and hit him once on the side of the head with the blunt end of the ax. Ansel never stirred. Like his mother, Ansel was dragged to the edge of the bed and he, too, was positioned half in and half out. Then Beadle took the bloody carving knife and slit his son's throat.

As he headed out of Ansel's room and down the hall to the room where the girls slept, William looked back and saw the bloody footprints that followed behind him. But there was more work left to do. He entered the girls' room and methodically hit each child once in the head, crushing their skulls. Then he dragged each child from the bed and lined them up on the floor side by side. Again he used the big carving knife as he slit their throats one by one. At last, finished with his terrible deeds, he headed downstairs dropping the ax to the floor and placing the dripping and bloody knife on the table next to him.

He sat down in his favorite Windsor chair which was placed next to the window where it afforded a pleasant view of the street. Next, he glanced at the paper-strewn table, satisfied that his rambling collection of letters would explain the gruesome events that had transpired. Then, using the arms of the chair for support, he stuck the muzzles of a pair of seven-band pistols, loaded with ball and powder, into each ear and pulled the triggers, killing himself instantly.

By dawn, news of the massacre had spread through the small town and soon most of the townsfolk had gathered outside. According to an account of the horrible events written by Chief Justice Stephen Mitchell, the townspeople were filled with shock and outrage, mixed with "poignant sorrow and tender pity for the lady and her innocent babes, who were the hapless victims of the brutal, studied cruelty of an husband and father, in whose embraces they expected to find security..."

Later that morning Elihu Williams, the local Justice of the Peace, directed Mr. Appleton Robbins, one of Wethersfield's constables, to empower a Panel of Inquiry composed of "twelve able and discreet men of the neighborhood" to investigate the deaths of the Beadle family. Their task was horrendous. Blood was everywhere inside but the results were undeniable. The Panel concluded "from sundry papers sealed and left upon the table," that William Beadle had murdered Lydia, his son, and his three daughters, and then taken his own life. The case was officially closed the next day.

However, upon reading his letters, the Panel also concluded that Beadle had been sane when he committed his crimes and so he must be held up to "suffer infamy for his deeds." According to custom of the times, his dead body was laid upon two barrels and his bloody knife was fastened to his chest as testament for his crime.

So many people had been drawn to the house by the tragic event that the family's bodies had to be removed from the house for viewing. All day long lines of people, young and old paid their respects. Two soldiers passing through the town were attracted to the scene by the crowds of people. They, too, joined the line of mourners. When they saw what Beadle had done to his family, they asked to see his body. When they were taken to him, they cursed Beadle and drew their swords. But they were gently restrained by the crowd of onlookers. Then with tears streaming down their faces, they returned their swords to their sheaths, bowed in respect, said a prayer, and continued on their journey. When a marker was finally erected for the family a few years later, the last line read, "And Indignations half unsheath their swords".

By the evening of December 12, the bodies of the family had still not been buried and the crowds were now growing angry. They planned to bury Lydia and the children the next morning but they were unsure what to do with William's body. One thing they knew was that they would not allow him to be buried with them.

Immediately a debate sprang up among the crowd over where would be an appropriate place of burial for someone who had so defiled his family--and shamed the town. It was finally determined that he should be buried without a coffin in an unmarked grave without ceremony "where four roads met" so that his grave would be continually trod upon. But though everyone agreed, in principle, a major problem presented itself to the locals. No one wanted him buried anywhere near them.

Finally a compromise was reached. It was decided to bury him in an unmarked, secret grave along the river bank. That evening, his body was lowered out the window, in the clothes he still had on, with the carving knife tied to his chest. His body, coffinless, was placed on a sled and his body was unceremoniously dumped into a hole near the river. But after a few days, as the town's anger subsided and people were able to think more clearly, many people began to fear that the body would be discovered since they had chosen a spot near the local ferry crossing. So the body was dug up and moved to another spot in the woods. But a few days later, some children who had been playing in the woods found the new gravesite. Again the body was unearthed and this time the body was removed from the town and secretly buried in Rocky Hill which was then less populated than Wethersfield.

Lydia and the children were buried in the local cemetery in a common grave. The funeral procession was a wrenching experience. The entire town turned out and a long procession wound its way into the cemetery. The children's coffins were carried by a procession of their peers who wept and wailed throughout the entire journey. Lydia's coffin was carried in solemn procession by the adults, too stunned to speak. The Reverend John Marsh gave an eloquent and emotional sermon at the grave.

It has been said that ancient peoples would, upon occasion, destroy their families to escape the wrath of their enemies and avoid captivity and humiliation. Mesada stands as sacred ground to the Jews who chose to commit mass suicide rather than become captives to Roman rule. William Beadle became a captive of his own tormented mind which seemed to distort his view of the world and his place in it. The world had become his enemy, economic hard times had brought him private humiliation, and his twisted belief in a personal God sealed his family's fate.

Just as it was in Jonestown, or in Waco, or in countless places throughout history, William Beadle, on a cold December night in a sleepy little colonial village over two hundred years ago thought that he, too, had found a better way.

 

 

Copyright © 2000 Steven R. Kravsow
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"