Im bill merchant, the Deputy Director for collections, historian and curator here at the Dna Technology oracle society. And i welcome you for tonights presentation. You must be some of the not some of the 46,000 people without power. I think i got that number right. So thank you for for coming tonight. And i know mikes a great historian. Were going to have mike warden is going to present unleashed by a mob. And so without any further ado. My lord. Thank you. Thank you. I do appreciate you coming out. Its been a stormy day. Its been a stormy evening already. So thank you for getting here. And im going to talk to you about a pretty tragic event from 1890 to port jervis new york. I mean, its, what, 43 miles from here. So most people are probably familiar with the area, at least. And we were connected by the canal. So theres a strong connection between different communities here. And just quickly, with my background, im a retired Police Officer. I did 22 years, started as a patrolman. I was promoted to detective after six and a half years. I did that for almost nine and a half years. And then i spent the rest of my career promoted to sergeant as a uniformed sergeant on the night shift, and i retired in june of 2021 to pursue other things, including my writing, and to hopefully finish this book, which was one of my goals. And i did accomplish that, as we can see. So were going to talk first about my book, and it did win two awards this year so far. One, the true crime category in both the ippy awards, which is the independent Publisher Book awards and the next generation indie book awards. So it was recognized by two different organizers, asians for true crime. So its quite honored to have that distinction and to have other people read the book and kind of take that value away from it. You know, im biased with how good i think it is, but its nice to see other people think is too. So when i told this story and when i write about a true crime, its easy enough to just write about the facts that this is what happened on this day. Okay. Thats not as interesting. I want to tell the whole story. Not just the night of the lynching, but the aftermath and the people involved who were they . I spent four years digging through old documents, going to the Orange County courthouse and sifting through boxes of old court records. I was lucky to find records that had never been used by researchers before. Before i had put this book together at the end of my sources, combined with 635 different sources. I was my mind was blown because, you know, as im writing it, the last thing i did was the bibliography. And im like, wow, i started counting. And im like, i had to keep writing down where i was because i couldnt believe it. The book is 444 pages long. That sounds scary. A bulk of the book is the backwards like and notes bibliography. Theres an appendix and theres a lot of illustrations. 178 of them. Photographs, maps, things like that, because its one thing to hear the story and hear about the people involved. But when you see their photograph and you can look at them on the page, this is the person theyre talking about. Or you can see the newspaper rendering of them. You can you know, puts a face to the name and, you know, i spent a chapter on the Race Relations in portugal, us, and there was no way around the offense of racist language of 1892. And in the decades before that. And i made a tough decision. I consulted with a lot of historian, ins, educators and academia. And my conclusion was to not censor the original primary sources. If i was quoting them. And that was a consensus with everybody i spoke to. So i did put a little bit of warning because, you know, what was printed in newspapers as regular course of business just a little over 130 years ago is extremely offensive when compared to our sensibilities today. So i do like to warn people about that. I wont be going into a lot of that today. Now, i have a long time interest in this story because of a family connection. My great great grand aunt was mary jane clark. Mary jane clark was my grandmothers aunt was her mothers half sister. Mary jane clark was one of the women working at a heart factory on june 2nd, 1892, who heres the Sexual Assault that were going to talk about that precipitates the lynching. She tends to the female victim and had talked about this. My grandmother heard the story from her aunt jennie, and of course, that i had heard it from my grandma. And what really was the the final push to do the book was was that my grandmas house . And she was going through her her family information, which was a big manila folder of just stuff stuffed in it. And she was going to show me Something Else in a newspaper article. Was there from 1985, which talked about her great aunt or my great aunt mary jane, and the lynching. And she says, you know, michael, john, you should really write about this because you do a good job. Now, the trick there was she used my middle name, john, that meant this isnt really a request. Its not really a recommendation. This is an order. You know, theres Ten Commandments and then theres grandmas number 11 penciled in and i said, you know, youre right. I thought about doing that over the years. Controversial topic. I didnt know how to tackle it, but i thought, you know what, let me start the research and ill just see what direction it takes me in. So im glad she pushed me. Unfortunately, she passed away before the book was done, but i did dedicate it to her. Hmm. And its a complicated story to tell. And youre going to see why its complicated as we get into this story, because so much is involved. Its not just the people. Its the complex aftermath. Its just inability to hold anyone accountable, even though someones lynched in front of hundreds and hundreds of people, all from the same community, people that knew each other. So i looked at it in big chunks. And this is as a as a criminal investigator for all those years, when you look at a criminal case, you have to look at it, you know, through the microscope. And then you have to get the big picture, you know, in a big credit to how i do my research. So the lynching is at the center june 2nd, 1892. This horrible event occurs. But who were the people involved . What happened leading up to the lynching . Was there a Sexual Assault . What about the apprehension . How do they catch the guy they believe conducted this assault and what leads to him being lynched . How did the mob get him into their hands and what happens during the lynching . What were the details . The lynching is bad enough, but the details that led up to that lynching, the beating, the kicking, the dragging him by the rope around his neck are absolutely terrifying. The legal inquiries, the grand jury, the coroners inquest. How come no one is held accountable . People say who was involved . They sit there in a room at the coroners inquest and say he was there. But yet nobody is held accountable. So the context really quickly, just to put port jervis 1890 to there was about 150, 160 africanamericans living in the community, a large percentage of them lived in a squatters community outside the village border. It was called the hollow, had some other names that were very offensive, but there was a lot of africanamericans that lived and worked in town. They owned property. They owned homes. They one of them was working with a doctor as an apprentice before he went to medical school for a year. So port jervis was probably very typical of most communities in they were have really considered themselves racist. They certainly looked down on the africanamericans that lived on the fringes of the community, but they also looked down on the white people that lived out in that community as well. It really boiled down to wealth versus your skin color to a lot of them. If you were poor and you were living outside of town, you didnt work. You were going to be scorned no matter who you were. And theres a lot of newspaper articles that go into that. So the africanamericans in the Community Never there never was a lot of problems. I couldnt find any evidence of that. The schools were never segregated. So africanamerican kids and white kids, they were all going to school together. So theres no evidence that port jervis is was segregated in any way other than economically by by circumstances. And, of course, lynching in the north was rare. In the south, it was common and became an instrument of terror after the civil war, in particular, as africanamericans, you know, the freed slaves went out and, you know, gain the right to vote and things like that became part of the community. So and its not the only lynching in Orange County. There was one other one in 1863 in newburgh, new york, very similar circumstances. Of course, 1863 is the draft riots in new york city. This precipitated it. But i think it was sort of a a microcosm of the bigger problem that the draft riots were later going to become. So port jervis has the distinction of the only lynching post 1865 postcivil war. So the people involved three people, and this is where it gets a little confusing because we have lena mcmann at the top. Lena mcmann is our victim of the Sexual Assault. And well talk a little bit about the you know, we have robert lewis. Hes the man who is lynched for his alleged transgression against lena mcmann. And then we have p. J. Foley, who is one of lenas suitors, if you will, a spurned lover who is accused of instigating the Sexual Assault. So lets talk first of all, robert lewis. First of all, early on in my research, i realized thats not even his name, robert lewis wasnt his name. The mans men remembered by an alias for a hundred and something years, 30 years at this time. His real name was Robert Murray. He was born around 1863, on the outskirts of port jervis. He was a local man. It adds another dimension of terror to this. His parents were Henry Jackson and anna mcbride. Henry was from the works barrow area. His family. Henry was a civil war veteran. He served in the 26 u. S. Colored troops in company b, i think. And had been in the area for a long time. These were local people. So i was one to point out the men who murdered robert lewis. They knew him and he knew them, you know, even if he didnt know their names, he was still a familiar face. They may not have known who he was, but he was known to them. So this is a very intimate, very personal criminal act that occurred on that night. And he lived most of his life in port jervis for a while. He had a job as a bus driver for the delaware house, was one of the nice hotels along the Erie Railroad by the depot and as a bus driver, he would cross the i think there was like 13 or 14 different tracks at the beginning of a busy yard. By the way, whoever put the crossing where the yard was. Didnt make a lot of sense. But he would drive across that or the depot, pick up the people going to the feller house and drive them over. Thats a pretty responsible job. Youre the face of the feller house. You has to be somewhat of a likable character. Otherwise, why would you send them . Why would you send someone thats not friendly, not polite, not, you know, entertaining to be around if hes going to scare your customers away and theyre going to go to one of the other dozen hotels that they could go to. So i like to think he was he wasnt a bad guy. There was no evidence to suggest he was a criminal or prone to criminal behavior, except for one little hiccup he had in his life. And we might talk about that before june 2nd, 1892. He just looked like most other people. He went about his business. His final hours were horrible and he was innocent till proven guilty. And so he was never convicted or charged with a crime related to the assault on lena lee mcmahon is really a forgotten victim in this whole tragedy because after the lynching, the Sexual Assault kind of gets briefly covered because it wasnt important anymore. The man who committed the assault was it was determined robert lewis. He had been hanged. Case closed. Theres no reason now to investigate the Sexual Assault. Lena mcmahons life after june 2nd, 1892, is tragic. And i wanted to tell her story because no one else had been able to really follow her in the years after that. Shes born around 1868 in new york city. She came to live with mcmahons around 1875 or 76 in port jervis. She was adopted by john mcmahon and theresa reilly, both irish immigrants that came over during the famine. John was a local glassblower. There was two big glassworks, one right on the canal and port jervis on glass street, where they had a big a big factory. There. When we were kids, we used to dig on the side of the hill and pull out the old glass, i guess slag and stuff. The big colored rocks of glass, which we thought were treasures, found out they were worth nothing. Very disappointing. But shes a very pretty, very smart young woman. Shes a graduate of the port jervis academy at a time when not a lot of people graduated. You only had to go to school till you were 14. And most of the graduates were women, except for a couple of years where you had a lot of men. And she operated a confectionery on kingston avenue in port jervis. She had ice cream and sold candy and stuff like that. Very pleasant. Very well liked in the community. And on june 2nd, 1892, her life completely gets turned upside down and is never the same again, and largely it might not be the same again because of mr. Foley. Pj foley is really a man of mystery. I dont use that phrase lightly here because first of all, no one knows what his real name is. Hes always referred to as pj. Is it philip . Is it peter . Sometime its written as both. Sometimes youll see in a document hes listed as philip jay foley of the times. Peter jay foley was two different names going on here. Hes from massachusetts and hes a insurance salesman who had come to port jervis by trade. He was a machinist and just as a side note, when i was trying to track down who he could be, i knew he was from warren, massachusetts. And that area, the number of people using initials for foley. Pj im like, how many people have the same name . The newspaper talked about his brother, who went by j. P. Like, this is not original people. This is not easy. So i never really did get to the bottom of mr. Foley because at some point the book wouldnt get written if i kept you know, i had to i had to put the white flag up on foley. But im okay with that for now. And whats he . A scoundrel . Was he a scapegoat . Did he put robert louis up to rape lena mcmann because thats what the allegation becomes in the days after the assault on lena. So on june 2nd, i like this quote from the Port Jervis Union thursday evening. June 2nd is a date that will go down in local history as marking the most disgraceful scenes that were ever enacted in the village of port jervis, if not in Orange County, they could have added in the state of new york and the United States because it really was. And the you know, the union was one of the papers condemned it, but then also sort of didnt condemn it. Ill get to that a little bit. So they have a toxic relationship. Lina meets foley, who is described as a handsome, young, good looking man, a little bit older, comes across as worldly. Hes an insurance salesman, comes up from new york city. Hes selling insurance from the big city. And his her parents were okay in the beginning until he gets arrested for defrauding an innkeeper and does a short stint in the county jail. Now, hes not good enough for lina. Her parents wont let them see each other. That was we know that doesnt really keep them apart. And they keep their relationship going, have clammed after meetings. You know, she sneaks out of the house to be with him. Hes, of course, not allowed near the house, but he manages to meet up with lina whenever they can. And theres allegations that he starts blackmailing her for money because he loses his job as an insurance salesman. Hes a drinker. At least thats one of the descriptions of him, is hes a drinker. So theres allegations of extortion, blackmail, and hes basically telling lina, im going to ruin your reputation if you dont give me money, i am going to tell the Community Things about you that no one will ever look at you the same again. So hes certainly implying that there might have been a sexual relationship between them and he was going to somehow get that out. Of course, the newspapers at the time never say that, but they always dance around the the language but get theyll theyll drop the nword in headlines in newspapers like it was nothing but they wont print theyll use g dash t dash but theyll use all types of racial slurs and its its baffling to see it because its so different than what we would see today. And its not that long ago. So in the days before june 2nd, lena goes to new york city. She takes the train from port jervis. Shes going to go visit friends. And there are two very different accounts of what happens. Lena claims that she goes down to the city, she goes to ask for a drink of water and a unsavory looking bar. And the next thing to remember is its like a day later and shes in port jervis again, has no recollection how she got there. Peter vole or pj peter philip, on the other hand, accounts for everything she did. She went to the city, she came back, they met up, they spent the night together. And then on the next day when she came back june 2nd, lena was going to leave port jervis and go to boston, where she had other family and pj is going to help her get her stuff because shes a nice guy. So theyre going to spend the morning together and its a beautiful june day. And lena is going to leave port jervis and theres an area called the fairgrounds. Its in the area where the Port Jervis High School is today. And shes down there sitting at a tree, reading a book and foley decides, im going to go get some sandwiches. And the o and w passed by there used to be the port jervis middletown and port Jervis Monticello railroad, i believe, at that time, not the old w there, but it crossed right through there. He takes the train down to the erie and gets some sandwiches and he leaves lena there all by herself. There are witnesses to everything that happens next and that is lena sitting and watching. Reading her book, its a beautiful day. Shes sort of by herself and suddenly an africanamerican man identified as robert louis o