100 years ago in a "Do you remember?" column, the paper wrote about the hanging of George Beale and George Baker, convicted in 1865 of murdering Daniel Delaney. It is interesting since we have a bit of a modern urban legend about the hanging site. But it is more significant than merely remembering the gruesome spectacle of a hanging and honoring, or being amused by, any subsequent sense of a haunting.
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| May 22nd, 1865 |
There is a greater and more wide-ranging kind of haunting, as it relates to the
story of an early Black Salemite, the way blackface had figured in the
crime, and ways that race is more central to our formative history than
many of us generally might think.
The 1922 column placed the hanging grounds on "the block bounded by Church and Cottage streets, Ferry and Trade, where the old jail was located."
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| February 5th, 1922 |
Current urban legend places the hanging grounds in Pringle Park between Winter and Church Streets behind the Hospital. Two photos in the Library's Historic Photos Collection appear to show the retaining wall for Shelton Ditch in the park (here and here). A ghost tour stops there.
But do we actually know with any confidence where it happened?
The contemporary account in the paper in May of 1865 (at top) doesn't say anything about the location.
Reporting the trial and sentence earlier in March, the paper had said "they were to be taken to the place of execution and hanged by the neck until dead, and the mercy of God upon their souls was invoked." It gave no specifics on the "place of execution."
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| December 17th, 1939 |
Another old-timer recollection in 1939 suggested there was a regular place for hangings, but also that "controversy has arisen as to the exact spot," but they focus on the south side of Ferry Street between Church and High. The coffee business now occupies the spot of the "Barrick undertaking parlor" at one end.
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| January 30th, 1952 |
And still later, Ben Maxwell placed it just north of Pringle Park, about where SAIF created a new swale and park area. There are likely other candidate sites identified in various recollections. (Here is a selection of transcriptions, also.)
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| Three candidates for the hanging grounds |
It would be very interesting if any firm documentary evidence shows up. It is an interesting curiosity, and particularly if there really was a kind of natural amphitheater where more than one set of executions were witnessed. The "ravine" that is mentioned in 1939 could be "the stream of mystery" rather than the Mill Race or Shelton Ditch.
Also about the hanging (and there are probably others!):
- The Bitsman returns to it several times, though he makes a little show of keeping the exact site a secret: July 28th, 1929; August 4th, 1929; August 9th, 1929; May 21st, 1940.
- Fred Lockly also, narrating oral history from Kate Pringle Miller, December 2nd, 1921.
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| October 12th, 1910 |
But there is also a more salient aspect than the spectacle of a hanging. Race is central.
One element is the possibility that Beale and Baker used blackface to deflect suspicion to a Black person.
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| Baker's confession, May 29th, 1865 |
A "negro or mulatto boy" was also a witness to the murder.
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| Jan. 16th, 1865 |
The story also relates to Rachel Beldon Brooks and the Delaney family. The boy, Jack, who witnessed the murder was nearly certain to be her child, and Daniel the father. Her obituary says "she was not at the home when Mr. Delaney was murdered" and "she claimed to know where treasure was buried on the Delaney homestead."
Delaney Road memorializes a slave-holder, and it is time to think more deeply about early settlers here and the wealth created by slaves, both the fortunes they amassed on farms and in slaves where slavery was legal, as well the unpaid or underpaid labor in their household by former slaves they brought to Oregon. Delaney supposedly had a fortune hidden somewhere.
As we consider the Meyer Farm and Joseph Waldo's connection to America Waldo, we might also consider Rachel Beldon Brooks and Daniel Delaney.
The connections in early Salem are deep and several.
David Logan, who married a daughter of Daniel Waldo, was the defense lawyer for Beale and Baker. Rufus Mallory, husband to Lucy, who would teach at the Colored School, prosecuted, and Judge Reuben Boise, who would later live in the Jason Lee House, presided. After the hanging, Beale's body went unclaimed, and Daniel Waldo volunteered to bury it in the cemetery at his house and farm. (See a little more on this elsewhere at "Murders and the Man of Mystery at the Waldo House.")
Though Salem and Oregon was very white, and the Exclusion Laws were on the books, race was at the center of things more than we might think.
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| October 21st, 1910 Oregonian |
Locating the hanging grounds is worthwhile not so much because of Beale and Baker, whom the evidence still seems to support as guilty, but because of the insufficient attention we have given to Daniel Delaney, Joseph Waldo, and other early slave-holding settlers here. Understanding Delaney's murder is not possible without understanding the background of race.
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