Kentucky Lawyer

Aftermath

7 Mac Swinford order and judgment of the court fiing the method of eecution. He tested the rope and saw that the feet of his subject were squarely fied upon the trap. “I am directed,” said the officer, “to state to you that you have reached the last moments of your life. There is now no further hope of reprieve or pardon. For the last time you are given the opportunity to acknowledge your crime and to pray forgiveness. Are you prepared to make a final statement? Do you have anything to say, David?” The prisoner looked at the sheriff and again at the crowd. He half raised his arms in an appealing manner, then as if in absolute hopelessness dropped them to his side. Then came the answer in a voice quavering with fear. “If I killed Nancy Sheely, I don’t know it. I never had nothin’ agin her.” It has been handed down in out county from those who witnessed this spectacle that David’s last movement was to turn his head toward the hill country in which he had spent his life. The trap was sprung and a supposed felon was dead. Aftermath But this was not the end of David Sheely for the people of Cynthiana and Harrison County. Later events were to establish beyond doubt that he had been convicted and eecuted for a crime he did not commit. To add to the wrong of taking an innocent life, the physicians of the county in the interest of science subjected his body to dissection and preserved his skeleton for enlightenment of the medical profession; thus compounding the com- 79 Kentucky Lawyer munity’s mistake by adding the disrespect of disinterring the remains and carving them up. Such treatment of the departed was practiced only upon criminals. In protest of these wrongs against him, the ghost of David Sheely walked the hills and vales of this county for many years. Notwithstanding the failure to believe in ghosts on the part of the intelligentsia, there is respectable authority that this was one ghost that was different and our county’s ghost was the eception that proved the rule! The Chronicles of Cynthiana, by Mrs. Lucinda Boyd, was published in 19.This delightful and charming book is a collector’s item of substantial value. Those fortunate enough to own a copy cannot be tempted to part with it at any price. Mrs. Boyd was a scholarly and well educated woman. She was the daughter of a Christian Church preacher, the wife of a circuit court judge and mother of many children, among them one lawyer, two doctors and a school teacher. I, of course, decline to vouch for the authenticity of our Harrison County ghost, but leave it to Mrs. Boyd who wrote about it in her book at a time much closer to the recorded events. “Still David Sheely walked the earth an injured, restless, unhappy shade, with a rope around his neck that trailed far behind him on the ground. Many persons in and around Cynthiana protest that they have seen him. “Tradition hath it, that the first time he appeared was on a festive occasion. He left the neighborhood of the hill on which he had suf- 0 Mac Swinford fered death, and haunted a dark ravine above the house now owned by Mrs. Calhoun. In that lonely spot, dense with undergrowth, years and years ago, a murdered man lay dead, and his blood stained the fallen leaves, and crept into the ground, and cried to God for vengeance. But the murderer was never found. This ravine is on the Leesburg pike. Not many miles from Leesburg, in December 17, was an old farmhouse that had been untenanted for months. The young ladies and gentlemen determined to have a dance in it on Christmas eve. Invitations were issued, and all preparations were made by the young people of the neighborhood for the ball. “About dark, a little Negro boy was sent to build a wood fire on the wide hearth of the deserted house. He built the fire, and, when it was blazing brightly, he started for home. On his way, he was compelled to pass a grave on the roadside that had been there so long that the oldest inhabitant had no idea who slept beneath the sunken sod. When he came near this...