Mabel Sprague Remembers

History Notes is a biweekly entry in the Sun Rise that features a passage from the Johnston Historical Society. This week’s story comes from September 1999.

Many people in the Johnston Historical Society and the town are well acquainted with Mrs. Mabel Sprague’s priceless knowledge of the town. A story she related to me some time ago is further proof of her powers of recall.

While discussing with her about some of the cemeteries in the Morgan Avenue area, Mabel informed me that there was a murder victim buried in the old Aversion cemetery, which is located on the Crandall Dairy farm (now owned by the Allendale Insurance Company). The story was related to her by her mother, Malena Atwood, when she was a young girl.

The victim of the crime was a woman named Potter. She lived with her sister in an old house near the corner of Borden Avenue and Morgan Avenue, that once belonged to her grandfather, John Alverson. According to Mabel, the house burned in the late 1890s. The two Potter women were unmarried.

As Mabel’s story goes, a mentally unbalanced man worked for the two women, possibly taking care of chores on the property. On the day in question, the man got into some sort of a quarrel with one of them. He struck the unfortunate woman in the head, resulting in her death. It seems that the man proceeded to run about a quarter of a mile down Morgan Avenue to the house where Mabel now lives.

He told Mabel’s grandmother, Clarissa Atwood, that there was a problem, that he had just had some kind of a fight with one of the Potter women. Mabel’s grandmother contacted the authorities and the man was arrested. Mabel does not know that name of the man, but she knows that he was sent to the State Institution in Sockanossett, where he eventually died.

But that was not the end of this tragic story.

Mabel’s mother told her that the surviving sister never got over the death of her sibling, and that a short time later she also died, probably of a broken heart. When I asked Mabel when all this took place, she said it was some time soon after 1875. Having made several visits in the past to the Alverson cemetery, I was quite intrigued by this story and decided to do a little bit of research. Checking my records for this cemetery, I came across these two inscriptions: “Lydia A. Potter/ died July 15, 1880/Aged 55 Years” and “Amelia F. Potter/Died June 7, 1880/Aged 57 Years.”

A day later, I checked the old death records at the Johnston Town Hall, which further verified Mabel’s story. The death record for Amelia F. Potter states that she was an unmarried, white female, that her parents were Mr. Stephen Potter and Marcy Potter (who was the daughter of John Alverson) and that her cause of death was a “fracture of the skull.”

The death record for Lydia A. Potter stated that she also was an unmarried white female, the daughter of Stephen and Marcy Potter. Her cause of death was declared to be “exhaustion.” Certainly, quite a sad story.

The two spinsters probably had no other close family, only each other. Amelia’s tragic death was probably too much for her sister to bear. A little over a month later, Lydia also died, as Mabel’s mother said, probably of a broken heart.

This sad tale is instructive for a couple of reasons. It reminds us that there is a story behind the many hundreds of gravestones that stand in the town. To the members of our Cemetery Committee, who frequently visit these sites either to clean or record data, it provides a sense of purpose and importance to the work they do.

This story also shows the importance of oral history and the need to preserve it. This story, for example, was passed down through three generations – from Clarissa Atwood to Malena Atwood to Mabel Sprague.

This knowledge is irreplaceable, for it puts a human face on the facts and figures written in the history books.