Mexico weekly ledger., 1877-02-22
A. Love Tragedy whose Final Act ID
IT,. UnwritteH.

One cold night in the winter of 1872,
says the New York Herald, when the
inhabitants of the village of Hunting
ton, Long Island, were at a hastings, q
party of masked men assembled in the
yard of a certain eminent Deacon. and
hid in the dark shadows of a hedge
fence, awaiting the arrival of a man to
whom they had sent q decoy letter.
That man was Charles G. Kelsey. In
response to the letter he went to the
house of the woman whom he passion
ately loved, and when about to enter
the grounds surrounding it he was seiz-
ed by the masked men, gagged, bound,
and dragged into the back yard, where,
before u select party of ladies and gen.
tlemen, he was stripped to the buff and
paraded around. 1t was a bitter cold
night, and the poor lover asked in vain
him not, but still exposed him to the
party on the stoop of the house. Final
ly, n of the masked men brought q
a of hot tar and began to paint the
poor man, now helpless with cold and
fright. In his acute pain from the burn
ing tar the poor fellow managed to I'M
loose the gag from his mouth, and his
cries were piteous.
The "ladies and gentlemen" in the
cosy comfort of great coats and fur
capes, rather enjoyed the antics of the
naked man, who yelled and jumped
with every new application of the
brush. After the managers of tha
show had tarred their victim sufficient
ly, a bag of feathers was produced, and
these were thrown on the still soft tar.
In this costume the unfortunate man
was brought carer the stoop, and the
masked men held lanterns aloft, that
the spectators might the better admire
their handiwork.
Here there comes q hiatus in the
story, a hiatus of five long years, for
from that night no,hing has been seen
of Charles G.. Kelsey. The men who
tarred and featheti him and the "ladies
and gentlemen" VINO witnessed the
deed have all been taken to court, and
the story above is the substance of their
testimony. They ~unblushingly told the
court, when called upon to testify, that
they saw Kelsey outraged, and enjoyed
the sight. The tormentors confessed
that they tarred and feathered their
victim, and having satisfied their desire
to punish him, they allowed him to go
home; that he skunk away into one cor
ner of the yard, and drew on his trous-
ers; that seeing one of them approach
ing, he ran away, and they saw no
OF him. Where he a to has ever since
been a mystery. The maskers and
their friends invented and adhered to
the convenient theory that, abashed at
the treatment he had received, Kelsey
betook himself to foreign parts, and
was ashamed to return.
About a year after the tarring of
Kelsey. two fishermen, Franklin and
Ludlam, while raking oysters in Cold
Spring Harbor, noticed something float
ing near them. On approaching the
object they found the neither limbs of q
The limbs were thickly coated
with tar, and, on searching the pockets
of the trousers in which they were en-
cased, a gold chain about five inches
long was found. This gold chain and
the trousers were identified by Charles
G.. Kelsey's brother and sister as the
property of their lost brother, and at
the Coroner's inquest a jeweler from
Babylon swore that he mended that
identical chain for Kelsey about two
months before he disappeared. This
same jury had before it a man who
lived at Lloyd's Beach, who swore that
on the night of the tarring and feather
ing of Kelsey he heard q wagon
rattle down to the beach
at about 2! a. m. He further tes-
titled that he heard the noise of oars in
the rowlocks of a yawl shortly after the
wagon departed, and the noise faded
away in the distance over the bay.
Next morning, when he went abroad
from the house, he inspected the road,
and found the tracks of a wagon u
ming from it on to the beach, and at the
terminus of the track he found a white
linen shirt clotted with gore. This gar
ment was also identified by the family
of Kelsey as the property of their lost
relative. To complete the symmetry of
the case and round the outline of the
evidence, Deacon Wood testified that
he saw Kelsey tarred and feathered.
With all this evidence at hand, the au-
thorities of Suffolk County have failed
to fasten the crime on any one.