Circa 1909 postcard by the “Elite Studio” of Medina, Ohio, depicting the home of Shubal Coy and family where they were murdered by Frederick F. Streeter on the night of July 1st, 1863.
Streeter was an original 1861 enlistee in Berdan’s Sharpshooters, serving in Vermont’s Company F of the 1st regiment, and was appointed the “superintendent” of the qualifying shooting trials for prospective recruits. As such he was promised the captaincy of Company F but the men did not like him and voted in another man as their captain; Streeter was given the rank of corporal but became dissatisfied and deserted the army in early 1862. He returned to his home in Bellow’s Falls, VT for a short time during which he sold his belongings and attempted to burn his wife and son alive in their rented domicile before fleeing to his mother and step-father’s rented property in Chatham Corners, Ohio. Soon after arriving in Ohio Streeter then moved to nearby Medina where he attempted to pass himself off as a Captain and recruiting officer. Contemporary accounts almost universally note that the locals disliked Streeter and considered him a shiftless and quiet night-owl who spent his time gambling and boozing in saloons and hotels. Despite being already married Streeter wed 16-year old Mary Jane “Dode” Whitmore of a prominent farming family and wasted no time in moving into their downtown home.
In researching the man himself through no small number of period newspapers the author became aware that prior to the July 1863 events in Medina, Streeter had been accused of setting fire to a neighbor’s woodlot when he was 13 years old, suspected of burning down the town block he worked in as a barber in Bellow’s Falls, and, most definitely, escaped jail in Boston after being caught distributing and using counterfeit money. The townsfolk in Medina would have had no inkling of these accusations, however, nor did they come up later during Streeter’s trial.
Having exhausted his meager supply of cash and after his “recruiting” job was exposed as a scam, Streeter befriended and worked for local livestock dealer Shubal Coy for a time in 1863. Coy and his wife Lucy lived with their 7-year old son Ferdinand near the Whitmore home downtown. Witness accounts stated that Mrs. Coy deeply distrusted Streeter who would frequent her home even on days when her husband was in the country purchasing livestock. In late June 1863 Shubal had made a large sale and came home bearing several thousands of dollars worth of greenbacks which he was known by friends to keep near him in his bedroom.
Early on the morning of July 2nd a neighbor across the street from Coys woke early to prepare his workshop for the day when he smelled smoke. He discovered the back of the Coy home ablaze and ran to check on the family while shouting the alert of a fire. As several other neighbors descended upon the home they found the lower doors and windows latched tight and had to force their way inside. While getting the blaze under control the first responders found the Coy family dead in their upstairs bedroom, Ferdinand included, who had been sleeping across the room from his parents. Shubal and Ferdinand were killed almost instantly with deep slashes to their throats. Lucy lay in a heap between the bedsteads bearing dozens of vicious stabs and defensive cuts, and, like the others, had her throat slashed.
During the attempt to put out the blaze and remove the Coys through an upper window some of the responders noted a number of unusual details. While the main doors and windows to the home were securely latched from the inside one of the upper windows was ajar (suggesting to prosecutors that the perpetrator had hidden in the home until the Coys went to bed). An empty envelope smeared in blood lay on the floor. A small area of fence outside was smeared with blood; muddy foot and hoof prints nearby showed where the perpetrator had likely untied a horse with bloody hands before fleeing the scene. A neighbor on the south side of the Coy home claimed to hear a muted scuffle early in the morning while other witnesses on a pike leading out of town heard a horse being ridden as fast as possible away from and then back into Medina.
Despite their best attempts to find a culprit the townspeople came up short in the immediacy of the murders. During the next five to six weeks rumors spread about Streeter being uncharacteristically flush with money. He had paid off several debts, purchased new boots and a gold watch, and gruffly avoided any and all talk of the murders. A committee was formed by the sheriff and mayor to try and determine who among the citizens of Medina could possibly be responsible, if any. Gossip and rumor led them to Frederick Streeter but by the time they attempted to question him he had fled town with his young wife. Around this time a business partner of Shubal Coy had returned to Medina from Wisconsin and informed the sheriff that he had encountered Streeter at various places along the same rail line from Illinois to Wisconsin. A local deputy was sent west with an investigator from Akron to locate Streeter, question him, and arrest him if possible. The plan was a surprising success; Streeter was eventually located in Wisconsin without his wife, bearing hundreds of dollars worth of bloodstained greenbacks. He was returned to Medina and jailed at the courthouse until trial.
With a crime that had no surviving witnesses, no murder weapon located, and no confession, Streeter was found guilty on circumstantial evidence alone and sentenced to death by hanging. So many locals packed the courthouse during the trial that the floor collapsed. Streeter was placed into the custody of the sheriff and jailed adjacent to the courthouse which was, coincidentally, directly behind and next to the home of his young wife Dode Whitmore. While jailed, Streeter was reportedly friendly and talkative with his guards who would bring him books and newspapers whenever requested. Either through negligence or a deliberate attempt to help him escape, Streeter came into possession of a knife and a file. Using these tools he loosened the mortar of a large stone in the wall of his cell; he would cover his work with newspapers claiming that it helped keep out a draft. On Christmas Eve, 1863, Streeter pushed the stone out of the wall and onto the cot of an empty and unlocked adjoining cell. He slid through the wall into the cell and walked out of jail before creeping into the sheriff’s personal residence while he and his family slept. Finding all of the doors securely locked he went to the second floor and secreted himself in the sheriff’s sons’ room where he spent several hours quietly removing the frame and sill of a locked window. Streeter disappeared into the night but first stopped next door at the Whitmore home to leave a goodbye letter to his wife.
By the time the sheriff learned of Streeter’s escape he was long gone to parts unknown. In a frantic attempt to locate the prisoner several dozen men on horseback set out in all directions to scour the countryside and nearby villages for any sign of Streeter. Knowing that a relative lived 15 miles away in Richfield, two deputies set out to investigate. They found nothing in the home but evidence of someone having slept in the hay loft was obvious in the barn. After waiting for additional men to arrive they located Streeter, muddy and disheveled, hiding behind sacks of grain in the loft. His last words to his captor were to the effect of “This is a devilish business you are up to.” Streeter was unceremoniously returned to Medina and jailed again until his February 26th, 1864 execution.
Local accounts spanning 60 years described that day as “black” and somber, however the town was flooded with onlookers who had come far and wide to witness the hanging. So many people in fact that they camped outside and burned fences, wooden siding of homes, and sheds to stay warm. The clamor for the spectacle was such that a tall fence erected around the gallows was torn down by the mob so they could get a better view. When the time came Streeter was seated on the back of a wagon and driven from the courthouse to the gallows a quarter of a mile from town, flanked by armed deputies and some infantry and cavalry who had come from Cleveland and Mansfield. Streeter’s last words were a plea of innocence to the father of Mrs. Shubal Coy; he said nothing in reply but an unknown voice from the crowd shouted out for Streeter to “shut your mouth.” Last rites were administered, the floor dropped, and Streeter swung for 10 minutes until dead. The crowd flocked for souvenirs soon after. Streeter’s manacles, white canvas hood, and bits of rope and noose were claimed by the mayor, sheriff, and other prominent townspeople while the gallows were hacked apart for chunks of wood.
After his execution Streeter’s body was given to his mother, Laura Streeter Gore, and step-father Hiram Gore of Chatham Corners, Ohio. A plea to bury her son at the same cemetery in which the Coy family rested was rebuffed, as was a request to bury Streeter in the Chatham Corners cemetery. With little further recourse Mrs. Gore had her son embalmed and displayed at her home for any friends and family to view which apparently were very few aside from gawkers. In one instance the Gore home was broken into in a possible attempt to steal Streeter’s body. Hiram Gore was eventually let go from his job and Streeter’s mother became a pariah. A 1911 newspaper account by a local witness to the hanging and fallout from it claimed that the Gores were soon forced to return to their birthplace in Vermont but were so destitute that they could not afford to take Streeter’s remains with them. The account also claims that with the help of a few sympathetic neighbors the Gores quietly laid Frederick F. Streeter to final rest on a corner of their rented property in Chatham Corners, adjacent to the barn and vegetable garden. They hid the freshly dug soil with the contents of their mattress and pillow ticks, and other household detritus, before departing for Vermont via wagon the next morning. Streeter’s mother would later erect a cenotaph to him in their family plot in Brattleboro but surviving records show that no actual remains were interred there.
While researching this sad but remarkable story I learned that nearly all of the related locations still stand to this day aside from the Coy home. After housing many tenants for nearly a century it was razed in the 1970’s by the owner and turned into a parking lot. Some of the physical relics of Streeter’s execution apparently still reside in various private and public collections which shall remain nameless. All accounts and details were gleaned from newspapers dating between 1863 and 1959 which were impressively full of primary sources from deputies, investigators, lawyers, doctors, and others intimately familiar with the Streeter case in life.
As to the victims Shubal, Lucy, and Ferdinand Coy, no written personal accounts by them or photographs of them are known to exist at the moment. But I wish that I knew more about them. All three were interred together under a simple marker at Spitzer Cemetery on Route 162 south of Medina. Bearing Shubal’s name and dates of birth and death, the marker’s base simply reads “Murdered in Medina.”
Brian White Collection.
They Expect Wonders of Us 