Title: The hanging of Ephraim Wheeler
Description: "In 1806 an anxious crowd of thousands descended upon Lenox, Massachusetts, for the public hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, condemned for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy. Not all witnesses believed justice had triumphed. The death penalty had become controversial; no one had been executed for rape in Massachusetts in more than a quarter century. Wheeler maintained his innocence. Over one hundred local citizens petitioned for his pardon--including, most remarkably, Betsy and her mother. Impoverished, illiterate, a failed farmer who married into a mixed-race family and clashed routinely with his wife, Wheeler existed on the margins of society. Using the trial report to reconstruct the tragic crime and drawing on Wheeler's jailhouse autobiography to unravel his troubled family history, Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown illuminate a rarely seen slice of early America. They imaginatively and sensitively explore issues of family violence, poverty, gender, race and class, religion, and capital punishment, revealing similarities between death penalty politics in America today and two hundred years ago."--Cover.
Subjects: Problem families, Berkshire County, Incest, Interracial marriage, Case studies, Capital punishment, Hanging, Social conditions, Rape, History, Dysfunctional families, Massachusetts, history, Massachusetts, social conditions
Places: Berkshire County (Massachusetts), Massachusetts, Lenox
People: Ephraim Wheeler
Time periods: Berkshire County, 19th century, 18th century