Sunday Pastries With the Dead 12

Part two of SPWTD 11, detailing an 1859 murder that rocked a small NJ town.

What better way to ring in 2023 than by diving into a dramatic historical murder? As a continuation of the sordid story behind SPTWD 11’s location, I’m telling you all about Reverend Jacob S. Harden, whose murder of his wife Louisa Dorland on March 9, 1859, made national headlines, and possibly even inspired a plot point in an Alfred Hitchcock film.

Left photo source.

First, I’m compelled to mention the sheer serendipity with which I discovered the information about Harden’s crime. I headed out to cover a large cemetery for post 11, but the day turned out to be far too cold for the wandering required, so I stopped at a smaller one on the way. I’d discovered the tiny old building and graveyard a few months prior when driving by—I couldn’t even find the structure on Google Maps, let alone the name of the church.

Upon inspection during my late December visit, I noticed there was a name stenciled in small letters above the church door, so that’s what I Googled when I got home. At first, there wasn’t much, but then I found a 2014 Facebook post on which someone had left this comment:

Yes, the surname misspelling threw me off at first!

Not only is the stenciled name not the original name of the church, but there are no Hardens or Dorlands buried in its unassuming little cemetery, so there would’ve been no other string leading me to this tale. It gets wilder—as it turns out, Louisa is buried in the larger cemetery that I’d been heading to until the weather detoured me. Stories want to be told, friends.

At nineteen, Harden—who’d long hoped to enter the ministry—had just finished working as a teacher and become a colporteur (someone who sells religious books door to door), and had received a license to exhort with the Methodist Church. The year was 1856, and he was invited to be a supply preacher at the small church I visited 166 years later. The congregation was very divided, but he managed to grow membership from 40 people to 110 people in just one year. He was also quite popular with the ladies.

That same year, Harden was introduced to Louisa, who was a member of the church. Her parents made it quite clear they wanted him to marry her—even going so far as to leave her unchaperoned with him in their house and on trips to his hometown (not only a scandal for common folks of the time but even more so for a reverend). He was also rumored to have had “friendships” with other ladies, which made Dorland’s parents all the more desperate to push them together.

Gossip quickly circulated about the pair (including whispers that Louisa was pregnant and had miscarried), and Louisa’s father finally demanded that Harden marry her. “I refused; gave my reasons,” Harden later wrote. “I was too young, was poor, and in debt; wanted to establish myself as a minister first; was willing to marry at some future time.” Her family threatened to prosecute him. In October 1858 he finally relented, and they were wed.

“I did not love Louisa as much as I should have done, to marry her,” Harden said. “But I believed her to be a good woman, and that she would make me a good wife, and I married her in good faith, determined to treat her as a wife should be treated.”

Harden couldn’t afford a house for them, so Louisa remained at home with her parents, not wanting to live with him at his boarding house. Mr. and Mrs. Dorland’s meddling quickly wrought disastrous results—Harden’s resentment at being forced into matrimony before he had his feet under him was clear.

“I did not go to her father’s often because I thought they did not treat me as they ought,” Harden wrote. “And in view of not being with my wife there more, Mrs. D became quite as troublesome as before marriage.” Louisa paid her husband visits and was said to be quite depressed. Clearly, Harden felt the same—it was on one of these visits in early 1859 that he began poisoning her with arsenic.

“Gave it to her on an apple; she said there was something gritty on it; told her it was a powder; she asked what it was for; told her to prevent pregnancy,” Harden wrote in his confession. “She studied a little, and then ate it. She got very sick about three or four hours after eating it. …Do not know how many doses I gave her between that night and Thursday. Thursday took arsenic out of vial and put flour in it; should not be suspicioned. Gave her some on Friday. Saturday abandoned the foul deed.”

As a strange sort of justification for his behavior, Harden decided he wouldn’t get more poison until he visited a fortune teller in nearby Easton, PA. When the mystic told him his wife “would not live long,” he took it as a sign to buy more arsenic and threw in some laudanum for good measure.

“Gave arsenic that night; do not remember what in,” he wrote. “Gave the vial of laudanum in tumbler … very sick that night. Next day gave more arsenic; do not remember what in, nor how much; large quantity. Do not recollect when I gave the last. Did not fail any time in going for the milk. …The night she died she wanted a doctor; I did not.” Louisa succumbed to his fatal ministrations shortly thereafter. She was just 22 years old. “After she was dead, I was afraid to go in the room alone where she lay,” Harden wrote. “She looked more beautiful than ever before.”

At first, it was thought that Louisa committed suicide, but an inquest was launched and the body was exhumed—her stomach contents were examined by a chemist, who found arsenic. Harden was immediately a suspect, so he fled town and traveled from upstate New York to Ohio before landing in Fairmount, Virginia. The New Jersey governor issued a $500 reward for his arrest.

“I did not know that poisoning was considered as murder,” Harden wrote. “Did not know the penalty was death till after she was dead. …Did not know anything about analyzing stomach and detecting poison.”

He was eventually apprehended because he subscribed to his hometown paper under the fictitious name James Austin, using a Fairmount, Virginia address. In his letter to the editor, he mentioned wanting to keep up with news about Jacob S. Harden’s crime. The editor was suspicious and sent a portrait of Harden to the local Virginia police, who quickly arrested him. He was transferred to a jail in Belvidere, NJ, less than 20 miles from where he grew up, and stood trial at the attached courthouse.

The circa-1826 courthouse and jail where Harden was tried and executed.

During the trial, private letters between Harden and Louisa were presented by the prosecution—in one, Louisa feared her husband was wandering, saying, “I think, by what people say, you are enjoying yourself in one place where there are three girls.” His response was terse and accusatory, reminding her that he’d wanted to wait to be married until he was off the preaching circuit. In none of their writing did they appear to particularly like each other—they simply slung accusations and frustrations.

While the letters made it clear their marriage was doomed from the start, the defense leaned into Harden’s stellar local reputation and Louisa’s accused mental distress, attempting to prove that she poisoned herself. But the prosecution emphasized his “appetite” for other women and convinced the jury that preachers can be silver-tongued liars. In all, over 175 witnesses were called. The evidence of Dr. Chilton, the New York chemist who analyzed the contents of Louisa’s stomach, ultimately sealed the deal. Harden was found guilty and scheduled for execution by hanging on July 6, 1860.

Though there was widespread press coverage of the trial, Harden decided to have his confession printed (this is where his above quotes are pulled from) in the hopes that the proceeds would benefit his poverty-stricken family. The short pamphlet also includes biographical information, reprinted correspondences, and fairly disturbing details about the execution—it remains among the archives of many universities, and you can read it here for free. Despite its horrors, the confession remains a rare and illuminating historical document.

Hundreds of people arrived to witness his execution—they were informed that it would take place within the walled-off jailyard, and only 150 ticketed people could enter. Louisa’s father was among those waiting outside—at Harden’s request and “from motives of propriety,” he wasn’t allowed in.

By his account, Harden was treated very fairly at the jail and even oversaw the construction of the gallows. He spent most of the night prior in prayer and also wrote Good bye. Jacob S. Harden on “large pasteboard cards” to be sent to his acquaintances as mementos. Unsurprisingly, they became highly-coveted, pricey collector’s items. Just prior to his execution, a hood was placed over his face and he was given a white handkerchief to drop in order to signal when he was ready. His last words were, “God have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus save me in heaven!”

An account in his confession booklet details that, “The white handkerchief fluttered, like a wounded bird, to the ground, the drop fell with a dull thud, the spectators recoiled, and closed their eyes as from the effect of a heavy blow, and the unfortunate man hung suspended by the neck, in the clear sunlight, between earth and heaven.” There’s more on what came next in the linked document above if you have a hankering for the gory details.

The throngs waited outside with bated breath until 23-year-old Harden was pronounced dead, after which the crowd cheered wildly. His body was transported 18 miles to his father’s farm, where he was buried “in sight of the house.” I haven’t been able to find burial locations for his parents and siblings, which leads me to believe that Jacob’s body was the first in what became a family plot; finding the farm’s location would require another month or two of research, so I’ll leave it at that.

Though the story is well-documented, the sensationalized aspects still cling to it all these years later. The desperation that fueled Harden’s motive was clear, but the cavalier nature with which he approached his wife’s murder baffles. Wouldn’t he have considered any other option as the first step in resolving their marital unrest? It remains a tragic and fascinating case.

Louisa is buried next to her parents—I couldn’t get a read from her on how she feels to be forever at rest beside the two (albeit unknowing) architects of her and her husband’s demise. She seemed grateful for the visit and glad for my condolences. I only wish a sketch of her lived on to be paired beside that of her infamous husband; it feels deeply wrong that the perpetrator of this heinous crime survives with both a likeness and his name on her headstone.

Further underscoring the enduring evil act: it’s rumored that Hitchcock was inspired by Harden’s technique of placing poison in milk for a major plot point in his 1941 movie Suspicion. A murder given the glossy Hollywood treatment via Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine; who would think it, strolling the grounds of that tiny churchyard where it all began?