The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1915-09-15
An AGED CONVICT
IS 0BEW|LDERED
BY the Strange Sights Of
Great City
AFTER YEARS Spent IN CELL
Killed Wife In Fit OF Insan'
ity-R Recently Pardoned
By Governor.
MEETS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


behind his silver-bowed spectacles
to-day came back into the world OF
men from Sing Sing Prison, where
he passed 20 years of what was to
have been a life sentence for having
killed his wife.
He is George Weldon Cram, whose
footsteps for more than three score
years led him over the rough path
of life honestly and honorably only
to bring him within the shadow of a
disgraceful death, when in a moment
of insanity, due to worry, he shot
and killed the woman he had mar
ried 80 years before and who had
bore him four children.
Now he has been fred by Gov.
Whitman that he may spend his last
days with his children and his child
ren's children, and II was to them he
hurried to-day in his clumsy prison
shoes-to his waiting daughter, Mrs.
Arthur Stein, his granddaughter and
his little granddaughter.
Cram, whose back is straight and
whose hands are steady despite his
weight of years, is a veteran of three
awrs. He fought in the Mexican and
Indian Wars for his flag and in the
Civil War for the Confederacy, for
he was born and reared in Weldon,
N. c., the first white child in that
settlement.
1t was in 1894 that he returned
to his home here after seeking work
for many days. and. embracing his
wife, said to her:
Rachael, ] am going to kill you,"
and before his son George, then IS
years old, could interfere, he shot
| her. He was found to be guilty of
murder in the first degree and sem
fenced to death. In his cell in the
tombs he hacked at his wrists with
the broken lens of his spectacles in
an effort to infiict on himself the
death which the State had declared.
But he failed in his effort and
| went to the death cell in Sing Sing
where he remained for "A days, un-
til former Gov. Levi p. Morton,
convinced that Cram was insane
when he killed his wife, committed
his sentence to life Imprisonment.
There he remained, watching the
years pass, gazing wistfully through
his thick silver-rimmed spectacles,
when he could, at the slim white
vessels plying back and forth in the
Hudson River. He never had a mark
against him, and Deputy Warden
Johnson, who watched him for many
years. recently appeared for ardon
for him.
This morning, in new suit of
clothes his daughter had sent him..
with a white handkerchief looming
perkily from an upper pocket, he
babe farewell to the 100 convicts,
shaking hands with all of them.
He was taken in an automobile to
Terrytown. where he caught train.
He stirred about in the tonneau seat
for all the world like a schoolboy on
a holiday, for il was the first auto
mobile he had ever seen or ridden in,
and h was vastly impressed. The
train he rode on overwhelmed him,
for 1t was different train from that
which bore him to death cell 20
years ago.
But the New York he saw again
weakened his mighty confidence that
he could come back and take up
again the snarled threads of his life.
He peerd through his Trick spec
tacles down the subway kiosks and
stood gingerly on the subway plat
worm to which the trains go thun-
dering by.
Then guided by friendly hands,
he went up Broadway; new Broad
way of mighty commotion and disor-
der, whose ragged mountains of
buildings doomed in the haze above
him.
MY" he gasped TREMENDOUSLY with
the Southern drawl which has chung
to him, things are changed"
II guess better go home" he
said weakly. I'm getting tired"
you see" he added in quick de-
fensive explanation, st isn't that Pm
old. ! am not I'm good for fifteen
years and I'm going 10 work, but
just got out Of the hospital week
ago. and I'm not right perky yet"
So he went TO the modest little
house on the West Side. where
home" is 10 be now. There his
daughter. who has grown old while
he was away, greeted him and there
his granddaughter and great-grand-