This story was brought to my attention by a listener named Toby. Unfortunately, the Chilton newspaper is not online anywhere to my knowledge and I have not had the opportunity to view the microfilm. However, someone transcribed the two key obituaries and put them online. That forms the core of this story, and I’ve fleshed it out with a bit more context and genealogy. I have no doubt there are more Granger news stories, but without a searchable source it would be pain. Maybe some day we’ll return to this.
Ephraim Granger was born October 11, 1822 in Warsaw, Wyoming County, New York. Warsaw is in western New York, in the general vicinity of Buffalo and Rochester.
He married Margaret A. Wright on September 8, 1847 in New York. They had a handful of children, living first in Rushford (south of Warsaw) and moving to Chilton, Wisconsin in the 1850s. Chilton was a rural community made up largely of German immigrants. A decade earlier it had been settled by a former slave named Moses Stanton, but it appears Stanton had sold off his land by 1852.
What the Granger family did in the 1860s and 1870s beyond farming is unknown. However, Chilton established their newspaper as early as 1857 and it’s likely many answers are in there. A photo on Findagrave suggests Ephraim served in the Civil War, specifically in Company H of 48th Wisconsin Infantry from February through September 1865. Ephraim would have been in his 40s at the time. Joining so late, they saw no notable battles and lost only 16 men – all to disease, not to wounds.
In July 1878, Margaret Granger attended a Camp Meeting held on Doty Island. Originally, “camp meetings” were held in frontier areas, where people without regular preachers would travel on occasion from a large region to a particular site to camp, pray, sing hymns, and listen to itinerant preachers at the tabernacle. Camp meetings offered community, often singing and other music, sometimes dancing, and diversion from work. The practice was a major component of the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical movement promoted by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and other preachers in the early 1800s. Certain denominations took the lead in different geographic areas.
Margaret was very enthusiastic over religion, and she was said to possess a “disordered mind” bordering on insanity. Still in July 1878, a few days previous to her examination for commitment at Oshkosh, she jumped through a window. She was conveyed to Oshkosh where she remained some time, improving considerably. Lack of room at the hospital resulted in her returning to her home in Chilton, where she was cared for by family. At times she would be much worse, and during these bad spells, she would frequently threaten to take her life, and had to be kept under close watch.
For a few weeks in March 1885, she had another of those severe attacks. She was wild and unmanageable and continually threatening to take her life. On one occasion she endeavored to accomplish her purpose by throwing herself into a pond on the premises. She was restrained by her husband, who took the precaution of tying her hands.
Early morning April 29, 1885, while her family was asleep, Margaret Granger had taken her life, by holding her head in a barrel of rain water. The report of the suicide was soon confirmed by neighbors visiting the scene, where upon Coroner Rollmann was called by a 61-year old neighboring farmer Silas Steere. Like Granger, Steere had originally come from New York. Coincidentally, he would be buried in the same cemetery, too – Portland Cemetery in Brant.
The coroner’s jury impaneled by Coroner Rollamnn found that she came to her death by her own act. The article does not give us Rollmann’s first name, and I was not able to find it. However, there was a Henry Rollmann (1863-1927) in Chilton who was quite notable. This Rollmann was a pharmacist for 30 years, president of the local bank, a state senator, Chilton mayor for one year and a member of several organizations. No mention is made of him being coroner, but I suspect this is the same man.
In 1886, a year after Margaret’s death, 64-year old Ephraim married 32-year old Mary Jane Raymond, and had two more children, Hattie and Ruby. Some of the children from his first marriage were older than his second wife… meaning his eldest grandchildren were older than his younger children!
Although Ephraim is barely referred to in his first wife’s obituary, he came to have a bad reputation by the 1890s. The newspaper said he was “a cross, ill-natured man for years.” He often quarreled with his wife which culminated in his making a brutal assault upon her on July 30, 1896, with a hammer and inflicting the following injuries upon her, a scalp wound two and one-half inches in length over the vortex of the skull and two scalp wounds each one and one-half inches in length, situated a little to the right of the center and about one inch posterior of the forehead, also a scalp wound on the back of the right ear. The ear was bruised and swollen and of a dark purple color. There was a wound over the right malar bone (where the cheek meets the eye socket) which was contused and incised. The right eye was completely closed from a severe contused wound of the same. The lower jaw was contused and swollen and in front of the right ear was a deep depression the result of a contused wound. Her right forearm was wounded near the wrist joint and her arm nearly broken. The little finger of her right hand was badly smashed and her head pummeled.
It was undoubtedly the intention of the brute to kill the woman at the time and he would have succeeded but for the timely arrival of her farmhand Gideon Nelson, who was attracted by the cries of Granger’s little girl and gave timely assistance and rescued the woman from her perilous position. Weak and bleeding she was conveyed to John Mangan’s house and cared for, suffering with concussion of the brain. Mangan (b. 1851) was a prominent farmer in Chilton who had not only his own farm but often hired out his services for threshing.
Granger went to his barn and procured a rope with the intention of hanging himself, but his courage must have failed him for he abandoned his idea and went about his work as usual. In the evening his hired men, John Brown and Gideon Nelson received their orders for the next day and returned to their homes in Gravesville and that was the last time they saw him alive.
The night passed and no unusual noise was heard in the neighborhood. In the morning Mangan’s son noticed that Granger’s cows had not been milked and immediately notified his father who went to Granger’s house to investigate the cause. As he entered the yard the presence of a pile of feathers mixed with tar attracted his attention. He went to the door and, it not being locked, pushed it open and discovered in the southeast room a disordered bed stained with tar and feathers and upon turning around saw the lifeless form of Granger in a bedroom just opposite.
Granger was in a kneeling position, his rigid body leaning back on a bed and his appearance was ghastly, his face and body smeared with tar and feather. With the exception of the two bedrooms everything in the house seemed to be in their usual places. On a table in the room separating the two bedrooms was a cup containing paris green and alongside the cup lay a large knife and a teaspoon. The appearance indicated Granger committed suicide the morning of July 31, 1896 and to cover his crime tarred and feathered himself that the public might believe that he was murdered in his home. (Paris green was a paint, but because it contained arsenic was more commonly used as rat poison.)
In contrast to before, Granger “was a man of violent temper and it took very little to anger him. It is said that he used to abuse and maltreat his first wife at the slightest provocation and from the result of such treatment her mind became unbalances. After several years her lifeless body was one day found in a rain barrel near the Granger home. The stories whispered about the neighbor-hood were to the effect that the poor demented woman came to her death by other that her own hands.”
Regarding his second wife, “He has abused and beaten her at various times. A few years ago he assaulted her in an inhuman manner. She came to (Chilton) and made a complaint to authorities. A warrant was sworn out, Granger was arrested, convicted and fined. Mrs. Granger began proceeding for a divorce but dropped the matter at the request of Granger who pleaded for another trial and promised to lead a better life.”
The necessary papers for the arrest of Granger for assaulting his wife had been drawn by District Attorney James Kirwan and were to be served by the sheriff Friday. Before the papers were placed in Sheriff Jensen’s hands John Mangan came to Chilton and notified the authorities of Granger’s death.
Mary Jane Granger recovered from her injuries, and ultimately passed on February 18, 1925 in Los Angeles from cancer. Their daughter Hattie died of suicide by carbon monoxide in 1937.