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May 23, 2007

B-Sides: Town prepares for first festival based around a hanging

By Mark Bennett

Palestine, Ill. — If Terre Haute had the guts of fellow Wabash River town Palestine, Ill., the city would be gearing up for its annual Communism and Socialism Festival right about now.

Yes, instead of grumbling derisively about the left-wing legacies of world-famous Hauteans such as Eugene V. Debs and Theodore Dreiser as many locals seem to do, their hometown would be capitalizing on its historic niche by planning a best Karl Marx beard contest, bourgeois-vs.-proletarian mud volleyball and an Iron Curtain fashion show.

Offended? Well, then don’t go to Palestine on July 6 and 7.

Visitors will need to check their sensitivities at the door during the first annual Elizabeth Reed Days. The event grew out of long hours of pondering by the members of the Palestine Development Association. They wanted a festival people would remember, rather than fall harvest or holiday celebrations common in many small towns. Some cities can claim notoriety for being the birthplaces of revered statesmen such as Tampico, Ill., (Ronald Reagan) or Plains, Ga., (Jimmy Carter) or Yorba Linda, Calif., (Richard Nixon).

With no president to call its own, Palestine decided to hang its hat on native daughter Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed.

“I haven’t seen any festivals in the Midwest built around a hanging,” said lifelong Palestine resident Jim Ellis, Development Association member and proprietor of The Village Framery on Main Street.

Yes, Betsey Reed is the only woman in Illinois history to be executed by hanging. The 162nd anniversary of her demise was Wednesday. Organizers of Elizabeth Reed Days, which has a theme of “Come Hang Around Palestine with Betsey,” hope any of her surviving descendants have inherited thick skin since she was capitally punished in 1845 for allegedly poisoning her husband’s tea with arsenic.

“We’ll probably hear from them,” Ellis quipped.

Betsey’s kin likely won’t be bothered by the early portion of the festival’s schedule, which includes an art show (featuring the work of teen painter Ben Kelsheimer), a fish fry (to benefit Christmas lighting), bingo, carnival games, music and wine tasting by Illinois wineries. But the Reed clan might get a bit irked by five hours of coffin races down Main Street, a book signing by Rick Kelsheimer (author of the soon-to-be-released “The Hanging of Betsey Reed”) and a melodrama at Palestine’s historic Fife Opera House (entitled either “Tea for Two,” “All Choked Up Over You” or “Swinging in the Breeze.”)

“I think everybody’s first reaction was, ‘Oh, that’s sick,’” admitted Bill Johnson, owner of Pioneer Winery and Development Association member. “But then their next comment is always, ‘Oh, you could do this’ or ‘You could use this punch line.’ So I think everybody gets into the spirit.”

(Speaking of spirits, the Crawford County Ghost Hunters have reportedly detected paranormal activity around her gravesite at nearby Heathsville. But we’re digressing.) Back to the festival …

“We’re advertising this thing as tacky and tasteless from the get-go,” said Rick Kelsheimer, who runs the Betsey Reed Bookstore on Main Street, where he wrote the 265-page book for Infinity Publishing on a computer in the back room. “It’s all tongue-in-cheek, and we don’t want anybody to take it too seriously.”

Back in 1844 and ’45, though, Betsey’s saga divided this town of 1,366 people. Palestinians were enthralled by a story so weird that Kelsheimer just had to turn it into a book nearly two centuries later.

Betsey was either a harsh woman “of peculiar and hardened disposition” (if you believed the town’s women of that time) or a hot prairie chick with a scar on her cheek who irritated the lady folk but dazzled the men (according to male descriptions of her). The town’s opinion of her ailing husband, Leonard, was split too, branding him either as a respected businessman or a lazy guy who’d had his livestock repossessed.

In 1844, a 16-year-old relative, young Eveline Deal, claimed she’d seen Betsey pour white powder in Leonard’s sassafras tea. He died a day later.

Why would she do such a thing? “Some said he had somebody. Some said she had somebody,” Kelsheimer explained. In his book, which falls into the historical fiction genre, Kelsheimer speculates the couple’s financial woes triggered his poisoning.

On the basis of the young girl’s claim, Betsey was arrested and thrown into the Crawford County Jail, which then was in Palestine. Somehow, despite lacking matches, Betsey lit a fire that burned the jail, which had oak walls three feet thick, to the ground. “People thought she was a witch,” Kelsheimer said.

The merchants were livid — not over the destruction of the jail, but because her expected hanging, which would have attracted thousands of spectators to Palestine, now would have to be moved elsewhere. The sheriff, perhaps sensing the economic impact, chose the option of chaining Betsey with leg irons to the bed in his home, which he shared with his newlywed wife. But apparently such bondage had implications beyond mere imprisonment, even in the 19th century.

“The sheriff’s wife wasn’t too happy with that arrangement,” Kelsheimer said.

So Betsey was taken to the jail in Lawrenceville, where she was tried and convicted, despite having A-team attorneys Augustus French (the future governor of Illinois) and Usher Linder (once the state attorney general, and a profane and hard-drinking acquaintence of Abe Lincoln). But the judge was state Supreme Court Justice William Wilson and the prosecutor was future congressman Aaron Shaw.

The trial lasted three days, and Betsey said nothing in her own defense.

“We wouldn’t have even indicted her today on the evidence they had,” Kelsheimer said.

On the eve of her hanging, Betsey reportedly had a spiritual conversion and the authorities allowed her to be baptized in the Embarras River. The next morning, May 23, 1845, she rode to the gallows on top of her intended coffin, loaded on an ox-drawn cart. She chanted religious songs to mixed reviews from a crowd estimated between 12,000 and 20,000 people.

The Rev. John Seed, asked to say “a few words” before the hanging, instead delivered a 90-minute sermon, while Betsey continued chanting. The throng of people, gathered on a hill alongside the Embarras, swelled so that kids climbed into a maple tree to get a better view. Then, just as the hangman began to trigger the trap door under Betsey, a branch of the tree — loaded with children — snapped. Thousands of restless onlookers suddenly turned to look at the maple and missed the actual hanging.

But they did see Betsey, dressed in a flowing white gown. That garment was intended for a more grand event. A religious sect had predicted the Second Coming for the fall of 1844, and passed out “ascension” gowns to its followers.

“When Jesus didn’t come that day, they had all these gowns left over,” Kelsheimer said. So Betsey got one the next May.

She was buried unceremoniously in a shallow grave by some wannabe 19th-century medical students in Lawrenceville. But her angry, tough-guy brother — who, according to Kelsheimer’s research, was the son-in-law of President Zachary Taylor’s first cousin — ordered them to dig Betsey up and rebury her at Heathsville, in eastern Crawford County, where she now rests under a headstone she shares with Leonard (yes, they’re buried side by side). Their epitaphs read, respectively, “death by hanging” and “death by murder.”

It was pretty controversial stuff in 1845. And while some folks in Palestine still argue over Betsey’s guilt, the most heated debate about Elizabeth Reed Days 2007 centers around whether the size of the engines powering the racing coffins should be restricted.

Who needs Richard Nixon? Palestine sure won’t on July 6-7.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

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