The execution of Frank Rumberger and Henry Rumberger for the murder of Daniel Troutman at Uniontown (Pillow), Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, took place in March 1882. At that time, the Harrisburg newspapers gave the history of executions in Dauphin County. This particular story told the history of the gallows that were used for the execution.
From the Harrisburg Daily Independent, 24 Mar 1882:
History of the Gallows
The gallows upon which the condemned men were executed today is as follows: It was built in 1854 and was first used in the execution of Cortland Charles Johnson, a very light mulatto, who shot and killed his wife, Priscilla Shammo, and Nat Collyer, per paramour, at Middletown. Johnson had lived in Harrisburg, and worked as a hostler in the livery stable of F. K. Swartz, at the corner of Raspberry and Strawberry avenues, and was well known here. He married his wife, who was a house servant, and took her to Middletown, where they lived. Their domestic life was not pleasant and Johnson took to the canal as a boatman. Hearing of his wife’s infidelity, he stopped at Middletown, went to the house and found Collyer in company with her. He deliberately
SHOT HER AND HER COMPANION,
killing his wife and mortally wounding Collyer. The latter was brought to this city and lived several weeks, dying in a small house in the rear of the hen arsenal on capitol hill. Johnson was tried for the murder of his wife, but the jury disagreed on account of one of the number being opposed to capital punishment. Subsequently he was tried for the murder of Collyer, found guilty of murder in the first degree and hanged in the jail yard, in the rear of the main prison, on the 25th of August 1854. The execution was performed by Sheriff E. C. Williams.
The next victim on this engine of death was William Williams, of Lykens Valley, who suffered the extreme penalty of the law of the 22st of May 1858, for the deliberate
MURDER OF A FELLOW WORKMAN
in the coal mines, who was killed and robbed on the mountain for a fewd ollars in money and some bogus jewelry. A brass watch found on Williams went a great way to convict him of the crime from which he suffered death. J. D. Hoffman, we believe, filled the office of sheriff at the execution of Williams.
Henry Hultzinger, a mulatto and a tramp, who killed his wife by crushing her scull with a stone in a woods this side of Middletown was the next murderer hanged on this scaffold. The execution occurred in the latter part of September, 1859. Huntzinger and his wife were a pair of degraded people, tramping around the country subsisting on what
THEY COULD BEG AND STEAL.
They were both addicted to strong drink. The crime was committed while both were intoxicated. Captain J. M. Eyster was sheriff when Huntzinger was executed.
John Moody and Lewis Rosenstine, two negro residents of Harrisburg, was the first double execution that occurred upon this historical scaffold. It occurred on the 9th of July 1874, for the brutal murder of a farmer named Behm, in Londonderry Township, in the lower end of this county. Sheriff Shaffer and his deputy, John Westbrook, officiated at this double execution.
The last execution in the Dauphin County Prison was that of the negro Frank Wilson, for the murder of the rag peddler on the commons near the Home of the Friendless, this city, in 1877. The execution was conducted by Sheriff W. W. Jennings.
When Nimrod Spattenburger was executed in Lebanon in 1879 for the murder of a tram named Ivison, the authorities loaned the ancient but well preserved gallows to the authorities there, and Spattenburg was hanged upon it. The engine of death was kept in jail there
WAITING TO DO DUTY
upon the first pair of the “Blue Eyed Six,” Sticher and Drews, but in the meantime the Lebanon authorities built a new machine similar in construction but a little wider, upon which the Raber murderers were hung.
The gallows also did execution work at York, and was taken at one time to Luzerne County, but the authorities here have no recollection who were hanged at those places. Prior to the building of the present gallows three men were executed in the county.
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[African American]