52 Ancestors In 52 Weeks: Full House

October, 2023 Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania

All the tickets had been sold so it was a full house of the curious, the believers, the skeptics. They were assembling to take a tour of the old county jail. What would they learn, see, and hear? The ticket holders were told a story…

More than a hundred years ago, an inmate gazed outside this cell window. His name was Bill Reed. He had only a week to live. There were children playing on the lawn next door. He called out to them and bid them a good day. He studied the clouds and relived what had happened that day in May, 1911. Dressed in a new suit, hat, and shoes, he had gone to the Mont Alto School of Forestry. He wanted to find his old girlfriend Sadie. She had a precious momento of his, and he wanted it back. When he found her in the school’s kitchen, he demanded that she get the item. She taunted him and threatened to throw it in the fire. As she turned to throw it in the flames, he shot her…he wanted to scare her. He fled. He knew he had hurt her bad.

The story continued as the ticket holders shivered in the dampness of the jail…as they heard sounds…as they heard movement. “Is that you, Bill?” the guide asked. “Yes,” came a whisper.

That next April, 1912, Bill was found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. A gallows had to be borrowed from a neighboring county. He spent his final days at his cell window contemplating his fate. Why hadn’t Sadie just given him the picture he asked for…the picture of him in his Spanish American War Army uniform…he was so proud of his service? “Just return the picture, Sadie,” kept going through his mind. And so, one day in April, 1912, Bill Reed walked out to meet his Maker. He would be the last man hung in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, for murder.

As the story ended, the ticket holders who made up that full house walked among the spirits of the old jail…among those spirits walked Bill Reed.

Note: Bill Reed is my husband’s 2nd great uncle. Researching his story started when I found his death certificate. It stated that his first vertebrae was broken due to execution. Now the hunt was on for the whole story. Tons of newspaper articles were found written in a sensationalized style.