Drawing Blood: Sketches from a Vicious 1886 Feud in my Community
One year since returning to my Delaware home, sketchbook in hand
New York Times, 1886:
Wilmington, Del., Jan. 12 — John Wesley Hanby, a farmer living on the outskirts of this city, in Brandywine, was shot through the heart and instantly killed about 7 o’clock this morning by Isaac S. Talley, the owner and tenant of the farm adjoining.
Ike and Wes
Three days after the deadly blizzard of 1886, under pre-dawn darkness, farmer Wes Hanby, 33, father of three, placed his shotgun in his wagon. He intended to force his way around snow-clogged Marsh Road, through the fields of Ike Talley, the man he despised. He also brought a gambrel. The long hickory butchering tool was used to hang carcasses for skinning. It also had enough heft to club a man to death.
The historic January cyclone decimated communities from Texas, through the plains, and up the eastern seaboard, landing a dead hit on the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast. Mounds of drifting snow made travel nearly impossible wherever the winds deposited it. Marsh Road, just south of Ike’s farm, was such a place.
Wes, bundled in two coats and an overcoat, was accompanied by his father Joseph. They pushed forward, hellbent on loading four calves on the train at Edgemoor Station that morning, just northeast of Wilmington, and to markets beyond. Arctic winds drove at their backs across pitch-black farmland under clear moonless skies, pierced only by their dim 19th-century lanterns. They slogged south in a light Dearborn Wagon, the pick-up truck of its day, with snow crunching under wood-spoked wheels. A pair of horses pulled their cargo toward the train a mile and a half away along the Delaware River.
Wes expected to pass through the first of Ike’s two fence openings. He and his brother had removed the fence bars earlier that night. But as they approached, a blaze of brushwood parted the night. Ike Talley, lit by the wind-whipped bonfire’s glow, sat waiting for Wes on the bars that were now back in place. Seventeen-year-old black farmhand, Walter Lockwood, bracketed the Dearborn, standing on a tree stump on the other side of the road.
Wes stepped down with his gun in one hand and the gambrel in the other.
He said to his father, “I’m going through there, or kill [Ike].”
Ike replied to Joseph, “Go down to the other bars, there’s a place there for you.”
“No. He’s to go in these bars,” Joseph insisted.
The Hanbys began pulling down the bars. Ike began putting the bars back. Wes reached full boil. He lifted the heavy gambrel, and swung, hitting Ike across the face, smashing four teeth. He raised the gambrel again, striking Ike across the left side of his head, and on his forehead. The sickening thuds split Ike’s skin to the bone.
Wes then grabbed his gun again, stuck it in the man’s bloodied face, and pulled the trigger.
Old farmstead
With a few quick pulls on his cordless drill, the county maintenance man removed the screws holding a plywood panel over the front door of the 200-year-old stone Jester farmhouse, a few hundred yards up the road from my parents home. As my wife Debra, my Dad, and I stepped in, the blanketing smell of manure from the muddy bull pen behind us yielded to the strangling odor of stagnant basement flooding and a well-caked trail of raccoon crap layering the narrow spiral stairs to the attic.
Our flashlight beams described a chaotically abandoned scene on an overcast morning in January of 2015. A weight bench here. An overturned bed there. A phone book open on a window sill from the final call of the last resident decades before. In the basement, a bloated raccoon carcass floated at the bottom of a round fieldstone well.
Many of these small stone farmhouses, some from colonial times, dot Brandywine Hundred, the northernmost tip of Delaware between the City of Wilmington and the Pennsylvania state line. This one fell into New Castle County ownership the way some others do around here. The government bought the farm to maintain the open space. The small dilapidated structure tagged along like an unwanted step-child.
Over time the problem often resolves itself through demolition-by-neglect. The structures fester and decay until they are deemed a safety hazard, and are then bulldozed. This one was likely to follow that path as its barn had a few years before. We stepped back outside, squinted at the boarded up stone walls, and tried to make sense of its history to hone our case for preservation.
After the visit, County officials asked me to write up our proposal to form an arts nonprofit and restore the place for art classes and a gallery. I dove into my research online and found a remarkable 1881 atlas of the county, published by Pomeroy and Beers. It depicted not only the roads, but also every structure here five years before the explosive encounter between Ike and Wes. Amazingly, it also inscribed the names of the owners.
As I inspected the map, a curiously detailed mosaic of extended and intertwined families appeared. Various names appeared repeatedly. We saw the Jester Farmhouse on Grubb Road, then owned by “Thos. Day”. There were also an awful lot of Hanbys and Talleys. There still are in fact. I know a few of them.
In the years since then, friends and community embraced the Artspace project and carried it to completion. My parents passed on soon after. Debra and I bought their house last year from my siblings and I became a Delaware resident once again.
Sketching and note-taking are how I harness my nomadic mind. If I was to properly resolve my once-again home in my thoughts, I would have to pay a visit to Ike, Wes, and the old families.
The night before
Wes Hanby earned a reputation around Brandywine Hundred as a volatile bully. He had attacked Ike’s 73-year-old father at a cattle sale at the nearby Weldin farm the previous spring. Ike, 30, father of five, jumped to his dad’s defense. Wes inflicted a brutal beating on Ike and even bit off a chunk of his thumb in the melee. A bitter feud took root.
On Monday evening, January 11 at 6 p.m., Wes Hanby gathered with his father and two brothers at the home of neighbors Samuel and Mary Saring, preparing for the morning ride across Ike’s fields. He spent the evening plotting a violent showdown and raging to his hosts.
He and brother Frank left at one point to take down Ike’s fence bars, and returned to prepare his shotgun. The older muzzle-loaded weapon used a caplock firing method. Powder would be poured into the barrel, with lead shot, and paper wadding. The trigger would drop a hammer mechanism onto a firing cap. The cap would send a spark into a small hole leading to the powder, firing the gun. Although modern shells existed, these weapons were reliable, cheap, and common among rural folk.
It was not in great shape though and one of the barrels was blocked. Frank grabbed one of Mary’s hair pins and jammed it down the barrel trying to clear it out, apparently without luck.
Wes rolled the paper wad into little balls as he loaded the open gun barrel, and in a particularly chilling aside, he turned to Mary’s young son and said, “I’ll make these wads round Harry, so they’ll go into [Ike’s] heart all the deeper.”
As the evening wound down, Mary remarked to Wes that earlier in the day, Ike had encountered Joseph and told him not to cross his fields. The comment so enraged Wes that Mary later said he “fell upon his knees by the stove-hearth, and throwing his hands up, and rolling his eyes back”, vowed that he would “go through the bars, or kill [Ike], or be killed.”
At 9 p.m. Wes left the Saring house for the last time. I imagine they were quite happy to see him go.
(Author’s note: I’ve placed Ike’s name in brackets because these quotes come from contemporaneous news reports and Wes’s colorful language. He was described as a fountain of profanity that the papers were not in the habit of printing. We don’t know the actual words. Feel free to use your imagination.)
Misfire
Wes pulled the trigger on his gun. The cap snapped harmlessly on the clogged barrel. Ike backed away as the Hanbys closed on him. As Wes raised the gun again to fire from the other barrel, Ike’s 31-year-old wife Eliza, four months after bearing their fifth child, ran from the house and grabbed the muzzle. She screamed, “My God Wes! Don’t shoot!” and wrestled Wes for the gun.
Unbelievably still conscious, Ike reached into his coat pocket, drew a pistol, took aim, and fired twice at Wes, hitting him in the left chest. A bullet ricocheted off a rib and grazed his heart. Wes stumbled back into the road, uttered his dying words to his father, and fell.
“My God Pap, I’m shot.”
Frank Hanby arrived immediately after the shooting, holding his brother as he died. Neighbor John Weaber came and helped Joseph put his son’s body on the Dearborn and turn back for home. Dr. Stubbs came to examine Ike Talley. Corner Smith convened nine men in a Jury of Inquest at the Hanby home that same day. Dr. Springer examined the body. Prominent families gathered in shock. Big city papers picked up the story. The impact to Wes Hanby’s chest erupted outward through the community like a blast wave.
According to reports from the Wilmington Morning News, when Dr. Stubbs arrived at Ike Talley’s home, he found him “suffering from shock, he was feverish, and his pupils were irregularly contracted. He was suffering with brain and spine trouble, could not comprehend questions, and his lower limbs became partially paralyzed… His life was in great danger.”
Get Alan Baseden’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The Jury of Inquest looked at the facts. Wes had stated an intention to kill Ike. He came to Ike’s property armed with a shotgun and a club. He tried to force his way through the bars. He beat Ike and tried to shoot him. Only then did Ike shoot Wes. You could easily see how the authorities would rule this as a clear case of self defense.
But you would be wrong. With only a few days of recovery time, Ike Talley was hauled off to jail to face first degree murder charges. If guilty, he would hang.
Ike and Eliza’s house
A sunny, mildly warm Saturday, just before noon feels like as good a time as any to drop in on a stranger unannounced. Two cars in the driveway. Good, someone is home. I strolled over the lovely cobblestone driveway, climbed a few steps, and rang the front door bell.
Or is that the front of the house over there? Old fieldstone walls boxed in a small core to the house, just like the Jester house. Several siding-clad additions sprouted from it as needed by successive generations of owners dating back to 1752. I stood for a minute contemplating the charming waist-high stone wall surrounding the property, wrapping around behind me, giving shape to a well-loved flower garden.
After a minute, I gave a measured 3 knocks. Loud enough to be heard but not enough to alarm people. I’m generally not uncomfortable knocking on strangers’ doors. But it did occur to me that I only knew of one other person to show up to this house uninvited. It didn’t end well for him.
A brown-haired woman in a tank top, shorts and bare feet with her hair clipped back in Saturday morning informality, greeted me with a smile much more pleasant than I expected.
“Hi my name is Alan, I’m a local artist and writer from up on Grubb Road and I’m working on a story about Ike Talley. I’ll be doing some sketches out here and I just wanted to give you a heads up.”
“I’m Alice,” she answered, gesturing with hand to her chest, stepping outside. I continued, “I’m pretty sure this was Ike and Eliza Talley’s home.” Alice gave a blank look waiting for me to say more. “Do you know if it was? I believe they lived here in the 1800s. I’m trying to confirm that.” She paused and looked away a little sheepishly, “We’ve been here thirty years and I don’t know as much about the property as I should. I mean, I’ve heard the name.” This was about to be a really great visit.
“I’ve got a story about your house that you’re going to want to hear.”
I stood in her doorway gesturing toward Mount Pleasant High School, across Marsh Road, where the snow drift was. I pointed to Alice’s back yard where a man was shot in the heart. I handed her a copy of the 1886 New York Times report of the killing, and a printout of the 1881 map that showed their house. I explained the family connections. Alice was dumbfounded and thrilled. I basked in a glow of deep satisfaction. I mean, it’s not every day that you get to stand in the sun and tell a lovely smiling stranger how a guy bled out in their backyard.
As wonderful a conversation as this was, I was amazed that I would be the first person in Alice’s 30-year ownership of this house to ever discuss it with her. It was the defining event among two of the biggest families in the area. It certainly seems to merit a historic marker, which isn’t a high bar in Delaware. We have historic markers for things like land surveys and a pottery studio.
This seemed to be a pattern. I texted my niece Jackie to see if she could give me any background on how the families feel about this today. She is a Talley on her father’s mother’s side. I think I was hoping to hear stories about bar fights breaking out over it. Or to hear her say, “Mom-Mom always said to never trust a Hanby”. But no luck. She had never heard the story.
I asked a couple of local reference librarians to help me find the news reports from the time. This was news to them too. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the story is completely lost. Some know it. And occasionally someone like me will revisit it. But 140 years ago, it was the state’s trial of the century.
Trial
The brutal winter of 1886 continued to play its tricks. A new storm approached from the south, shoving aside the deep freeze. Torrential rains pushed ice melt downstream, swelling the Brandywine and Christina Rivers. On the morning of the 10th, less than a month after the death of Wes Hanby, the doors to New Castle County Courthouse swung open to a surging sea of spectators for the murder trial of Isaac S. Talley. Men and women, many with small children, raced to grab seats in the newly built, spectacular Victorian hall of justice with its tall brick chimneys and clock tower under a domed cupola. Despite the chilly soaking rain outside, the packed courtroom was suffocating.
The public gobbled up every inch of available space. Police and court officials struggled to maintain order among an estimated 2,000 people. Spectators filled the seats, the aisles, the actual well of the courtroom inside the bar. Women were even seated at the bench with the panel of four judges. The only clear space was directly behind the jury box to protect them.
The sheriff and two deputies helped Ike as he struggled to climb the stairs into the courthouse. The crowd fell silent as he was lowered, exhausted, into a cushioned, reclining armchair provided at the request of his doctor. Eliza sat nearby.
Ike’s condition was pitiful. His still-open head wounds remained swaddled in bandages. He floated in and out of consciousness, only intermittently aware of his own trial as Deputy Attorney-General John Biggs lined up the case to bury him.
But Ike held his attention as The Clerk of the Peace read the lengthy indictment. With his right hand raised, Ike firmly responded, “Not guilty before God nor man.”
The prosecution hinged on rights that may seem foreign to motorists today. Travelers in those days had a well-known and undisputed right to cross another person’s property if a road was blocked and they had a great need to get by. It was called a “way of necessity”. Wes did indeed have that right if he truly couldn’t get through the drift.
From the perspective of the authorities, Ike’s actions were just the same as if he had set a bonfire in the middle of the street, blocked an innocent farmer, then killed him when he tried to get by — as Wes had the right to do. Wes may have been an awful man, but as the prosecution reminded the jury, Wes was not the one on trial.
The two main views of events came from the victim’s father, Joseph, and from Eliza. But as the wife of the accused, she would not be allowed to testify. Joseph struggled and pushed his way through the mob to the witness box to recount an emotional first-person account of the death of his son. He laid the blame squarely on Ike. It was Ike who was the aggressor. It was Ike who struck first. It was Ike who shot first. All Eliza could do was sit and take it as tears ran down her face.
After the prosecution laid out its case, prominent Wilmington attorney Levi Bird took first bat for the defense. Beside him sat his partner in the case. The majestic 45-year-old attorney with a high forehead, roman nose, and walrus moustache, conveyed uncommon dignity and charisma. The Talley family had landed one of the state’s greatest legal minds. And most everyone in the room knew his name. He was U.S. Senator George Gray.
The defense pivoted from Joseph to someone else who directly witnessed the shooting and had been overlooked. The young black farmhand employed by Ike had been standing across the road. The defense called to the stand Walter Lockwood.
The kid’s voice was strong. His recounting of events was new, surprising, rock solid, riveting, and very at-odds with Joseph Hanby’s. His words also aligned with physical evidence of the scene. Despite a long and spirited cross-examination, Walter held. His testimony was devastating.
On the fourth day of the trial, just before noon, the jury retired to the third floor of the courthouse to deliberate. Ike faded in and out of consciousness in the packed courtroom. They were only gone 24 minutes before the bailiff dashed back down the stairs announcing, “The jury has agreed!”.
At 12:15 p.m., the jurors took their seats once more. Chief Justice Comegys warned the multitude that there were to be no outbursts when the foreman read the verdict. Ike was carried back into the tightly-wound silence and arranged on his recliner, unconscious, surrounded by relatives and doctors, for the final time.
The clerk asked the jurors if they had all agreed. They nodded. Then, “What say you, Mr. Foreman? Do you find Isaac S. Talley, the prisoner at the bar guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted? Or not guilty?”
Forman Carpenter, six-feet tall, rose slowly. His voice was nervous, but clear enough to be heard by everyone in the crushing audience.
“Not guilty!”
The room erupted in cheers, drowning out Chief Justice Comegys. Reports described the celebration as like nothing the state had seen before with shouts, claps, and waving handkerchiefs. Sore winners even discussed bringing perjury charges against Joseph Hanby for his testimony in support of his dead son.
The object of the riotous joy, Ike Talley, the survivor with a still-gaping wound across his head, the most celebrated figure in the county, the star of national news coverage, managed to open his eyes. Walter fought his way to Ike’s side. Ike, unable to say a word, smiled and took the hand of his steadfast young friend.
Legacy
Over the next two months, the spectacle faded from the public eye, and the bitter winter of 1886 yielded to spring. The thaw brought blossoms, and hope for an end to the conflict. By April, as the frozen land awoke, Ike Talley fully recovered.
And sued the shit out of Joseph Hanby.
Many streets and landmarks bear the names of the old colonial settlers whose descendants still make their homes here. Despite a transformation of this area from dairy farming to suburbia in the post-war era, personal ties and family connections remain deeply important.
The 1881 map is viewable on the Library of Congress website. Ike’s house is shown when it still belonged to his father-in-law, Ed Beeson.
I often take a looping walk with my dogs around my neighborhood, passing through Jester Park, exiting onto the grounds of the adjoining elementary school. The County built it in 2012 on the site of my old junior high school that they tore down. It was named Hanby Junior High and I was on the wrestling team. Our arch rival was Talley Junior High.
Fittingly, only Talley still stands.
