Thanks Mary. I had Christopher Columbus s/o James R. Sweetin and Mary Ann Kirk. Is this correct? I see the Sweetin/Harmon marriage here: Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763–1900 SWEETEN, CHRISTOPHER HARMON, ALLIE 1882-10-14 006/0115 00000133 JEFFERSON According to the 1900 census Alice T. Sweetin stakes she has given birth to 3 children with 2 living. Sandy On 1/10/2011 6:57 AM, [1]zandz@juno.com wrote: This story is well known in the Southern Illinois area. The parents of Wilford are Christopher Columbus "Lum" SWEETIN and Allice I. HARMON. I have one sister for him, Bertha SWEETIN, who married (1) Ed WILLS and (2) Alex BUMPUS. Mary ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Sandy Bauer [2]<sandy@whalen-family.org> To: [3]ilfrankl@rootsweb.com, [4]iljeffer@rootsweb.com Subject: [ILJEFFER] Wilford Sweetin murder Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 23:58:37 -0700 Sweetin Researchers I was recently given a copy of newspaper clippings about a double murder by poisoning in 1924. Anyone else heard about this? I believe this is the family in the census below based upon the newspaper description which I've transcribed below the census info. Anyone know who Wilford Sweetin's parents are? 1920 census Spring Garden Twp, Jefferson Co, IL - 3 Jan 1920 34/34 Sweetin, Williford Head M W 35 M IL IL IL Elsie M. Wife F W 27 M IL IL IL Byford L. Son M W 9 S IL IL IL Stanton H. Son M W 8 S IL IL IL Harry L. Son M W 3 S IL IL IL First newspaper clipping starts with: By Peter Levins "Water!" whispered the dying man. "Please....water!" Wilford Sweetin's comely wife, Elsie, haggard from loss of sleep, jumped up, but the Rev. Lawrence High gently restrained her. "You Stay with him," he said. "I'll get you some water, Brother Will." Outside a dog barked as a car stopped in front of the Sweetin bungalow in the little town of Ina, ILL. Grave-faced neighbors, fellow coal miners, halted their pacing to watch Dr. Sullivan enter the brightly lighted house. It was the night of July 28, 1924. "Ah, Doctor," the minister greeted, "you are back sooner than we expected." Dr. Sullivan nodded. "Can you see any change in his condition?" "Unfortunately, no." The doctor sat down by his patient, who was breathing heavily, every muscle straining. Will had taken ill just six days before. Dr. Sullivan had diagnosed it as ptomaine poisoning. Nothing to worry about, he had said. Now Will was dying. Dr. Sullivan turned to Mr. Hight and nodded gravely. The minister motioned to the three Sweetin boys -- Byford, 14, Stanton, 13, and Harry Lee, 8 -- who were sitting in the next room. They ranged themselves by the foot of the bed. "We must pray," said the minister. He summoned Mrs. Eva Miller, a cousin of Mrs. Sweetin. All knelt. The heavy breathing ceased, the figure relaxed. The Reverend High prayed on, the soft words of supplication falling swiftly from his lips. The doctor left. The sorrowing watchers in the street dispersed. One by one the neighbors' lights went out. "It is God's will," the minister told Elsie Sweetin. "Try to bear up." The strain had been too much for the wife and mother. Friends and relatives had to take over the household duties and funeral arrangements. Mr. Hight and his portly wife, Anna, proved towers of strength. Sad-faced Elsie Sweetin recuperated enough to attend the funeral. She wept with the others when the minister delivered his sermon at the grave. "I am unworthy to preach the sermon over the body of this good man," he began. "I stand in the place of the Apostle St. John, who said, "Let not they heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would not have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." "I tell you as St. John did that you must believe in me when I say that in my father's house are many mansions and by my conversion of Brother Sweetin a place has been prepared there for him. "I NEVER wanted to come to Ina, Friends, but something drew me on, kept drawing me on. I never knew what it was, not until the day I met this good woman who lies cold in death before us here now. Then it came over me just as the great light that called me to the service of God came over me and I knew I was sent here to convert him to the true faith. "Brother Sweetin was an unbeliever in Jesus Christ and God, and I was sent here that he might be redeemed and that I might redeem him." Mr. Hight paused dramatically, gazed from one solemn face to another, then cried triumphantly: "But I saved his soul, Friends! I sat by his bedside as he lay dying. I found the good fight -- and won! I moved his soul for God and he is now in the eternal light of the gracious countenance of Our Lord!" Thus Will Sweetin passed on, and thus he was buried. Illustrated by SEMOUR BALL [separate photos of Elsie Sweetin and Rev. Lawrence Hight] More newspaper clippings continue to tell the story as follows: That summer Mrs. Sweetin often visited the Hights and was on hand when Mrs. Hight, mother of a son, 14, and two daughters, 16 and n23, fell ill of what seemed to be ptomaine posioning. As in the case of Will Sweetin, no sort of medicine helped her; she grew steadily worse. Mr. Hight circuit rider with four churches in that section of southern Illinois, asked his followers to pray that his good wife's life be spared. On occasion he knelt by her bedside and uttered fervent appeals to the Almighty. "O God in They infinite mercy," he sobbed, "can You not intervene and spare this woman who is so dear to me, and so precious to her children? Spare her, God, spare her!" Sometimes Elsie Sweetin knelt too. The sick woman suffered. She gasped for water. On Sept. 12 her breathing ceased. "Anna! Anna!" the husband cried. He flung himself across the bed. .... A small town everyone knows everyone else's business. Ina was a small town. Among the Sweetin-Hight neighbors, it became common knowledge that Elsie Sweetin, one of the best-looking women in the parish, was in love with the minister. He had apparently begun to exert a powerful emotional influence upon the miner's wife months before Will's death. One neighbor said that on occasion he had seen Mr. Hight signal to the Sweetin home from the vantage point of a pile of railroad ties. "Elsie just couldn't seem to see enough of him," said the informant. "Where was she when Mr. Hight was holding that camp meeting at Bonnie a few weeks ago? Why, she was living in a cottage right beside his! An poor Will dead only a month!" Will had taken ill at a church social. The minister had come to see him every day during his illness. He'd sat with the sick man the last two nights of his life. Will had kept crying for water. Mr. Hight had brought him water. Mr. High? Such a pious man? ..... Gossip. The talk reached the ears of Druggist John E. Webster, whose store was in near-by Benton. He recalled selling Arsenic to the Reverend Hight some time early in the summer. For rats, the parson had explained. The rats had become a terrific nuisance at his place. Webster got out his poison register, which Hight had been required to sign at the time of the purchase. Here it was, Lawrence Hight, July 22. July 22! Why, that was the very day that Wilford Sweetin had taken sick! Webster phone Sheriff Grant Holcomb who called on State's Attorney Frank G. Thompson. The latter decided at once to have the body of Anna Hight exhumed and examined. Six days after Mrs. Hight's death, Dr. William D. McNally of Chicago reported arsenic in the body. Hight was arrested on suspicion at the home of his married daughter at Tamaroa. He insisted he had purchased the poison to kill rats, and had used for that purpose. "We found a box of rough-on-rats in the parsonage," Thompson told him. "You hadn't used it all. Why did you buy arsenic when you already had rat poison in the house?" "I insist I bought the arsenic for the rats." Locked in the Jefferson County Jail at Mt. Vernon, 12 miles south of Ina, he told reported "I am just as close to Heaven in jail as I am out of it." All this is the result of totally false gossip. I never talked to Mrs. Sweetin alone." Meanwhile, the body of Will Sweetin was being exhumed. The town seethed with the news. The doctor who examined Wilford Sweetin's exhumed boy reported: "Have found very large quantity of arsenic in the stomach contents. Further analysis will be made andn report sent as soon as possible." Feeling mounted. Mr. Hight began to lose his pious calm. >From the window of his cell he could see men in the street -- brawny, rough-clad fellows. They had been friends of Will Sweetin. But the minister lifted his hands in horror at the accusations of his inquisitors. How could they bring such a charge as homicide against him? At 4 a.m., Sept. 22, he admitted that he had fed his wife poison "to relieve her pain." "To relieve what pain?" Thompson asked him. "She had been ill. She weighed 210 pounds and she was in pain." "From what?" "Ptomaine poisoning." He signed a statement to that effect, the signed a second statement reading: "On Sunday morning, July 27, 1924, at the home of Wilford Sweetin, I placed some poison in a glass and gave it to Wilford Sweetin, who drank it. I did it to ease his pain. Elsie Sweetin knew nothing of this." Crowds congregated at the jail. They wanted to take Mr. Hight out into the country. Sheriff Holcomb swore in special deputies, who took up posts around the building. "What is going on?" Hight asked a turnkey. "They want you" the attendant answered. "No, no! They would not do this!" "Oh, yes they would," the man said, "if we'd let them." "Call the sheriff! Tell him I want protection! Tell him to take me away from here!" Presently the sheriff arrived. The prisoner threw himself on his knees before him. "I didn't do it alone -- she helped me!" he all but wailed. "I killed my wife, yes -- but she -- Elsie -- she killed Will!" Mrs. Sweetin would not substantiate his story of a murder agreement. "If Will was murdered," she calmly stated, "then the minister must have done it. He is behaving like a coward." She admitted to reporters that she had fallen in love with Lawrence Hight. Will had been devoted to her, but what he had to give her in the way of worldly goods had not been enough. She had begun to work out at the age of 11, and had married Will Sweetin when she was 15. Pastor Hight came to town, and she went to him f or advice. She thought he was a good man. She withheld nothing in her confession of unhappiness. "I told him of my husband's want of affection." she continued. "I told him that Will was working too hard in the mines. I told him Will was neglecting me. I thought that Pastor Hight would suggest some spiritual remedy -- some cure through prayer. He was kind and sympathetic. He won my confidence from the start." She thought his love had been only spiritual. "Please believe that my own heart was pure!" she cried. "I did not know then that the heart I received in return was sinful." Hight also had something to say. "There is a lesson in all this," he said. "Marriages must have emotion as a basis or there is no happiness. Had I met and married Mrs. Sweetin first, our lives would have been unutterably happy. But she married a cold, indifferent man and I married that kind of woman. God forgive me!" Mrs. Sweetin eventually won an acquittal - in a second trial-- while Hight went to prison for life. 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