[As transcribed by Bitbybug [2]. The name of the newspaper is unknown, but it is most likely a Philadelphia newspaper. The date is also unknown, but it is after 1959 since it mentions the Schuylkill Expressway which was completed by then. In a column entitled "Candid Shots."]
On the banks of the Schuylkill, at Market Street, where the Expressway now runs, there was once a pretty little burying-ground, with clipped turf, shady walks, and interesting headstones for the pleasure-seeker to peruse
In August, 1816, on the common at Center Square (now Penn Square), they hanged a man convicted of murder under sensational circumstances. This was Richard SMYTH, a veteran of the War of 1812, in which he served as lieutenant. His body was taken to the Lower Burying Ground, as it was called, and there buried. A Mrs. Ann CARSON wept by the grave, and saw to it that a handsome white tombstone marked the spot.
That was the ruin of the handsome cemetery. Sightseers trampled its grass, broke down its gate, and upset its markers. In those days, the Conestoga wagons rolled in Lancaster Turnpike (now Avenue) from the Western regions, and parked in long lines on Market Street. We suppose that every driver and every rider was curious to view with his own eyes the grave of Richard SMYTH.
Why was it such a current sensation? The story has a James M. Cain flavor.
At about the time of the Battle of New Orleans, Mrs. Ann CARSON kept a china shop on the northeast corner of Second and Dock Streets. Her husband, Captain John CARSON was a master mariner who had been stricken from the Navy list some years before, as too fond of the rum. In 1815, he was skipper of a merchant ship that had been away on a trading voyage so long that Ann began to think of herself and to behave like a gay widow. By all accounts, she was a fine figure of a woman. Third Lieutenant SMYTH, ex-23d U.S. Infantry, dropped into the china shop more and more frequently.
Then, one day they agreed that John CARSON ... [missing words here] ... must be dead. they ... to a post chaise, ... [married?] a stage stop on the New York line.
But John was not dead. Two months later, his ship came up the river, and he went along Dock Street to his home, only to find another husband sitting in his chair. Fifty years would pass before Lord Tennyson would write "Enoch Arden." Jonathan had nothing to guide him except a hasty temper. He did not peer through the window and tiptoe away. He rushed in and was promptly thrown out by the athletic infantryman.
John came back again and again. At last, in an effort to make him see reason, SMYTH drew a pistol and shot CARSON, wounding him so severely that he died two weeks later.
The upshot was that SMYTH was indicted for murder and Ann as an accessory to the crime. The trial in the summer of 1816, before President Judge Jacob Rush, lasted a week and aroused great interest. The result was a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death for SMYTH. Ann was acquitted.
Her only hope, she believed, was to induce the Governor, Simon SNYDER, to grant a pardon. When he refused, she thought of ways to make him see the light. His great friend and political supporter, an Irish refuge from the Rising of 1798 was John BINNS, editor of the Democratic Observer, published from a house on Chestnut Street between 2d and 3d, not far from Ann's shop. Why not kidnap one of Binn's children and release him only in exchange for a written pardon? When that harebrained scheme appeared impractical, she came up with another plan. It seemed to her it might be more sensible, and quicker to kidnap the Governor himself. That, too, fell through. SMYTH was hanged, and buried.
After his death, Ann went to pieces. She died in Walnut Street Jail, around 1824 where she was sitting out a sentence for counterfeiting, from the effects of a blow given her by a fellow prisoner. The grave of her bigamous lover disappeared forever, just a century ago when the Pennsylvania Railroad extended the area of its original station at 30th and market. The bodies were taken up and relocated in another cemetery but where we don't know. Nor do we know where ... [more missing words]
