Week 18 - Crime and Punishment

 Week 18 - Crime and Punishment

The Maniacal Murder in My Family Tree

         My ancestor, William C Canaday (1836-1905), had a brother: Richard Darius Canaday (1840-1907).  Richard had a daughter named Mary Cotton Canaday. Mary married William H Artman, (my ancestor Mary (Polly) Artman’s brother) and they had five children, the oldest being Charles. According to The Evening Republic, a newspaper in Columbus, Indiana, William H Artman was a “Spiritualist.”  The Victorian Era Spiritualism movement in America got its start on April 1, 1848, in Hydesville, New York by the Fox sisters, two teenage girls who claimed they conversed with a man who had been murdered several years previously, in the house they lived in.  Spiritualists use mediums and conduct séances in efforts to contact the dead. (Victorianweb.org)

           According to the February 13th article in The Evening Republic, William H Artman, on the morning of February 12th 1894, during breakfast, attacked and murdered his wife Mary and his oldest son Charles, who attempted to protect his mother.  The other children, “almost naked and covered with blood”, escaped to the neighbor’s house.

         The first people on the scene were John Eads and William Nagle.  When they arrived, Artman, who was lying on the floor next to his victims, “jumped up and rushed them like an infuriated wild beast”, and they had a hard time getting control of him.  The coroner’s deputy Henry Nimsgern, asked William Artman if he committed the murders and was told, “Yes, Henry, I did; I killed them both.”  Mary and Charles weren’t only murdered, they were mutilated.  The newspaper article describes the grizzly scene (which I won’t elaborate on here.)

            The Evening Republic might have been The National Enquirer of its day; another newspaper, The Tell City Journal had a slightly less dramatic version with more facts, but those facts raised other questions in my mind.  This information can be found in Andrew E Stoner’s book, Notorious 92.  In the Tell City Journal’s February 21, 1894 issue, details from the sheriff’s investigation were published.  While The Evening Republic reported that Mary was killed in the morning, and Charles was killed trying to protect her, the investigation indicated that Mary was killed between 8:00 p.m. and midnight on Sunday, February 11th, and Charles wasn’t killed until around 8:00 a.m. the following morning, which explains why mother and son have different death dates. Both victims had “their features mutilated almost beyond recognition by the boot heel of the murderer.” (Tell City Journal) I’m assuming the house the Artman family lived in was small by today’s standards, so the difference in the times of death confuses me.  One would think that a violent attack like that would have awakened the children. 

The Tell City Journal also reported that two of the children, Laura and Albert (ages 9 and 8) escaped the house and ran to the neighbors for help.  According to Laura, her father had been “agitated for some time on Sunday, accusing his wife of ‘consorting’ with a neighbor man who lived two miles south.” (Stoner)  The other two children, Eddie and Mary Orilla, ages 4 and 1 survived the incident, though there is no explanation as to how.  Terri Rick contributed an entry to Find-a-Grave that indicates that the surviving children were raised in Crawford County, and Ancestry.com records place the two youngest in Crawford County, Illinois.

         After being arrested, William Artman was held in the Perry County jail at Cannelton, Indiana, where he attempted an escape on May 8, 1894.  The Tell City News reported the incident, stating that he “was overpowered after an interesting fight”.  (I would like to know what they meant by that.)  The trial, which started on May 24th, lasted three days.  Artman testified for himself; however, the Cannelton Telephone reported that his testimony was “rambling, vague, and inconsistent with itself”.  On May 26th, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. (Stoner)

         The June 29th issue of The Evening Republic recounted the murders and claimed the reason Artman gave for committing the murders was “he had been commissioned by the spirits to sacrifice them.”  At the time of the article, Artman was dying of consumption in “the Prison South.”   He died in prison, and the prison cemetery is now under the parking lot of the Proctor and Gamble Company. (Rick)  Mary and Charles were buried in Deer Creek Cemetery in Perry County, Indiana. (Stoner)

Another newspaper article, this time from The Cincinnati Enquirer, dated March 2nd 1895, tells of the community burning down the house where the murders occurred.  The article states the reason as: “…to wipe out the exact spot where such an atrocious crime was committed in order to keep the scene from boys and girls who are growing up.”  The article further states that the house was believed to be haunted, because people who lived nearby claimed that “loud female cries [could] be heard at any hour in the night by passersby.”

William H Artman was my 1st cousin 4x; Mary Cotton Canaday was my 1st cousin 3x; Charles Canaday was my 2nd cousin 2x.