The Saga of Bessie Webster – Part II

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Betsey “Bessie” Webster is shown in this newspaper image from a 1913 Boston Globe newspaper. Next month readers will find out how she became the subject of a national news story. (Middlebury Historical Society image)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

Part II of V – Betsey “Bessie” Webster, a Native American woman, was born into poverty in Middlebury, Connecticut, on September 21, 1889, to Franklin “Frankie” and his wife, Mary (Corliss) Webster. She was the sixth of 13 children. Her father, in turn, was the second of 12 children born to Solomon and Mary (Wilson) Webster; Solomon was the first of eight children born to Montgomery and Sybil (Elwell) Webster. The Websters were a prolific family, and many relatives remain today, although they probably do not know it, and perhaps there is a reason for that.

Crime can be associated with poverty; six months after Bessie was born, her uncle, Daniel Webster, 22, brutally attacked Lizzie Cowan, also 22, a popular Middlebury school teacher, on her way home from teaching. Her throat was gashed, and she barely survived (she would live on to have a career as a talented Waterbury high school principal, and she died at the age of 77). Daniel confessed and was convicted and sentenced to eight years in Wethersfield Prison. Before he completed the sentence, though, he died in prison of tuberculosis in 1895. Bessie’s family had many strikes against it from the very beginning.

Little is known of Bessie’s early life. A 1902 newspaper article spoke of her as having been absent from her Middlebury school only one day that year (two siblings had perfect attendance records). Her parents continued to give birth to children, and she was almost 15 when the 13th child was born to them. About 1905, she met and married William O. Wakefield from Windham County, Connecticut; Bessie was only 16 years old at the time, and William was 23 years her senior.

In the last part of the 19th and far into the 20th century, theories of eugenics were widely accepted by many scientists, including many medical experts. Eugenics today is discredited, but then it held that society could improve itself by selectively “breeding” out those of “inferior” genetic makeup. The theory claimed that undesirable traits are transmitted by heredity; these families, it was claimed, could produce offspring who were “criminals, paupers and harlots” (a phrase popularized by Richard L. Dugdale, a leading exponent of eugenics, in the 1870s).

While her husband, William, was working on the Dwight Wheeler farm in Middlebury, Bessie began a romance with another worker on the farm, James Henry Plew (sometimes spelled “Plough”), 33 years her senior. James was a member of an Ulster County, New York, family, the infamous “Jukes” family, which had been “scientifically” studied and shown to be “genetically inferior.” As one of at least nine children born to parents who could neither read nor write, he had already confessed and served time in prison for stealing two horses and burning a barn in Orange County, New York, with his younger brother William in 1891.

Bessie and William had two children, George William, in 1907, and Cora Belle, in 1909. James Plew and his wife Lena had about five children. However, William and James knew of each other’s interest in Bessie, and family tensions were high. James’ wife left him, but William and Bessie had a kind of reconciliation. In April 1913, Bessie and William relocated to Bristol, Connecticut, and James and his family remained behind. If “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Bessie and James were desperate to be with each other.

With James Plew pining away on the Wheeler farm in Middlebury, and Bessie in Bristol yearning to be with him, the two hatched a plot. At this point, the major obstacle to James and Bessie’s dreams was the presence of Bessie’s husband, William. Thus, about June 20, 1913, James and Bessie plotted to be rid of their problem. That decision would lead to one of the major news stories of, not only 1913, but much of the early 20th century, as we shall see.

You are urged to join the Middlebury Historical Society by going online at MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or visiting them on Facebook. Questions about membership can be sent to Bob at robraff@comcast.net.