Litchfield enquirer., 1840-11-05

der, followed by suicide, was committed m Wallingford, New Haven county, on Tues day morning the 20th inst, by David Hop kins Hotchkiss, on the person of Mrs. Harri- ct Jane Allen. Information of what had ta- ken place was early given to Justice Pom roy, who summoned Jury of inquest at the house of said Hotchkiss, and where with others we repaired, scene indescribably shocking and painful to every feeling of hu- manity was presented. On bed in a small room at one end of the kitchen, lay the life. less body of Mrs. Allen, horribly cut and hacked with sharp axe, the instrument used in her destruction. On bed in room at the other end of the kitchen lay the life
 less body of Hotchkss, with profusion of blood on the floor. He seemed to have been sitting on the edge of the bed, when he thrust his large pocket knife into the side of his neck, by which he opened the jugular vein, after which he walked few steps towards the door, as the bloody tracks of his feet in- dicated; but probably finding himself taint returned and threw himself upon the bed, where he soon expired. The murdered wo- man, about two years ago, left her husband, and since that time had lived chiefly with llotchkiss, at bis house. it is supposed on terms of cohabitation. The day previous to the murder shc had been with Hotchkiss te New Haven, to obtain of the Court a bill of divorce from her husband. The hi}h was granted, but had not been prepared in due form by the clerk, when they returned home. It was their agreement when she should obtain a bill, they would bc married. In the morning after their return, the matter was talked over, but he was not disposed to be soon married nevertheless he wished her to continue to live with hina as she had done. She told him that if he would not be married the following Sabbath evening, she would leave his house the next morning: with her mother, saying "that she had lived in sin long enough" They retired about the usual time, he to one bedroom, and she to the other with her mother, who for the time was there, having been to New Haven,. to assist in obta thing the bill.
 Early in the morning he was up md about the house, and went to the bed of Nus. Allen and asked her to get upr fos what purpose it did not appear by any testimony before the jury; she declined. He left the room, anC after while returned with the axe, and be- ing again denied in his request, he raised the axe, and with repeated choppings ended her life.
 Hotchkiss had long been man of intcm- perate habits, but not subject to helpless drunkenness. He drank little at time, and drank often, and consumed large quan- titles of intoxicating liquor the evening be. fore the horrible tragedy was performed.
 Hutfoed Coufant. LETTERS os MRs. ADAMS, tEe wifs ef John Ad-
 ans, ,oith an Iniroducing Memoir, by her
 Grandson, Charles Francis Adams:
 JOHN ADAMS, second President of the Uni ted States. died at the age of ninety -one, at the ancient seat of his family in Quincy, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July, 1926, a half century from the day on which he af- fixed his signature to the Declaration of American Independence. Eight years be- fore his death, after a union of fifty-four years, he was bereaved of his wife, one of the illustriDus women of New England, in that great day of its heroes and heroines. The work before US is q small selection from her letters Prenxed 10 them is a Memoir, which, while it is beautiful specimen in that Ge- traion to the contents of the volume.
 Mrs. Abigail Adams was the second daughter of the Rev. William Smith, the Congregational clergyman of Weymouah, village on the coast of Massachusetts Bay. bordering upon Quincy, and about twelve miles from Boston. Educated hr a time when there was no public provision in the colonies for the instruction of females, her for intellectual culture were only such as could be found in private read ing. and the society of her female friends "I was never sent to any school" she says to one of her correspondents and female education in the best families went no fur ther than writing and arithmetic in some few and rare instances, music and dancing" In her twentieth year, in October, l764, she was married 10 John Adams. IIe was young lawyer of rising reputation; but, so far were her high destinies in this union from being anticipated, that it appears the disparity of rank between the minister's daughter and the legal asprant, presented some interruption to the course of that true love, which, for one reason or another, has never yet been known to run smooth.
 "The father of Mrs. Adams," we quote from the Memoir, "was pious man, with something of that vein of humor, not uncom- mon among the clergy of New England, which ordinarily found such field for ex- ercise as is displayed in the pages of Cotton Mather. He was the father of three daugh- ters, all of them women of uncommon force of intellect. though the fortunes of two of them confined it's influence to a sphere much more limited than that which fell to the lot of Mrs. Adams. It is an anecdote, told of Mr. Smith, that, upon the marriage of his eldest daughter Mary,] he preached to his people from the text in the forty second verse of the tenth chapter of Luke. And Mary has cho- sen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Two years elapsed, and his second daughter. the subject of this mo- tice, was about To marry John Adams, then a lawyer in good practice, when some disap- probation oi the match appears to have man. fcsted itself among portion of his parish toners. The profession of law was, for a long period in the colonial history of Massa-