Absalom and Alexander

by D L Edwards

Absalom and Alexander: A Lynching in Mercer County

On the morning of the day of her death, July 8, 1872, 13-year-old Mary Belle Secaur attended Sabbath school at Liberty Church in Liberty Township, Mercer County, Ohio, which was situated between two and three miles of the place where she lived. Mary, a half-orphan (her mother having died several years before and being abandoned by her father before that), lived with the family of a gentleman named Seederly. Like many others, she remained at the church to attend service and headed for home after its conclusion about noon, unaccompanied. She was last seen alive, by any but her murderers, about a half a mile from the church.

She was missed on Sunday afternoon, but her absence roused no particular suspicion when she failed to show that evening. She had on several occasions before stopped on her way to spend the night with her grandmother.

When Monday morning came, however, and Mary did not appear, inquiries were made, but nothing was learned of her whereabouts. Her friends became seriously alarmed and began a search for her. The news soon spread and neighbors joined in the hunt for Mary Belle.

Soon, her body was found in a brush heap, a mere two rods from the road and within a half a mile of her home. The sight of her remains was described by witnesses as a most sickening one. Her head had been crushed by some heavy instrument and was completely severed from her body, which was shockingly mangled. The poor girl had been popular in the country neighborhood where she lived, and her life had been so vilely and viciously snuffed out that even the most hard-hearted could not help but be moved to tears and indignation by the event.

The officers of the law were presently sent for to investigate the scene and to set upon the track of the murderer or murderers.

Andrew Kimmel has been employed for some time driving a peddling wagon for A. J. Dillingham of Fort Wayne. On the Thursday prior to the murder, he drove his wagon to Ohio and on Friday met (quite accidentally) Alexander McLeod, who was driving another of Dillingham’s teams, at a crossroad some four miles from the scene of the murder. Being in the neighborhood of the residence of Henry Kimmel, Andrew’s uncle, the two decided to drive there and remained overnight into Saturday morning.

Andrew hitched in his team in preparation to return to Indiana, but both he and Alexander yielded to Andrew’s relatives when they beseeched them to remain over for the Sabbath.

On Saturday, they attended a railroad election, returning to the uncle’s house about five or six o’clock in the evening. They remained there all evening and slept there that night. McLeod, together with seven members of Henry Kimmel’s family, attended Liberty Church on Sunday, June 30, the day of the murder. Andrew, ill with neuralgia, remained at the house.

At nearly eleven that morning, Andrew said that he talked to McLeod and Absalom Kimmel, who returned from church before the others. When asked why, Andrew stated that McLeod replied that they were both tired of the preaching. At that point, Andrew Kimmel, still feeling unwell, went upstairs and lay upon a bed. The other churchgoers returned about noon. He could not say when the pair left the house but noted that they returned about two in the afternoon.

Andrew Kimmel and McLeod stayed over yet another night and left on Monday morning before the murder was discovered by friends and neighbors. They drove into Jay County in Indiana, intending to sell their wares there through the week, but their inventory was so low and in such bad repair that the pair returned to Fort Wayne a day early on Thursday.

The next morning, between eight and nine o’clock, they were arrested on Calhoun Street in Fort Wayne by the sheriff of Mercer County and three deputies. McLeod resisted the arrest, but Kimmel advised that they go quietly since they had done nothing wrong. They climbed into the vehicle with the officers.

At Decatur, they got dinner. After, Kimmel and McLeod were separated into two buggies, one prisoner in each. They passed through Wilshire, Ohio and proceeded on to the murder scene in Mercer County. After disembarking from the buggies, Alexander McLeod became very agitated and was said to exclaim that he “never committed any murder or crime on that bloody spot.” The crime had not been mentioned to the pair along the trip. Also, the crime scene had been tidied up and was no longer the blood-spewn site it once had been. These would remain key points later.

From there, the two prisoners were escorted to Celina, where a preliminary examination was held, and Andrew released without having been confined to jail. However, after members of Henry Kimmel’s family were interviewed, Absalom Kimmel and Alexander McLeod remained confined in the Celina jail. A ribbon attached to one of Alexander McLeod’s team was later identified as having belonged to the deceased girl. Andrew Kimmel reported that the ribbon was found on the ground and attached to the horse by McLeod.

paraphrased from The Indiana Herald (Huntington, Indiana), July 10, 1872:

Alexander McLeod and Absalom Kimmel, two of the men charged with the rape and murder of Mary Belle Secaur of Mercer County, Ohio, were taken out of the jail in Celina yesterday and hung. It had been noised abroad that the criminals would be lynched Monday, and early in the day people from far and near

flocked into Celina until thousands had assembled. About 10 o’clock, an organized band of some three hundred horsemen with a captain and a hanging committee of twenty-five in wagons, arrived. They held a meeting on the fairgrounds, after which they went to the jail, caught the sheriff, took the keys from his pocket, and opened the cells.

The two Kimmel brothers and Alexander McLeod were brought out of the jail and put in wagons with the committee of twenty-five, and the procession started for the place where the girl was murdered. (Other accounts differ with this assertion in that Andrew Kimmel had been released and younger brother Jacob Kimmel, 17, was never arrested for the crime.)

From eyewitness interviews and an interview with Andrew Kimmel, the cousin of Absalom Kimmel and printed in the Indiana Herald (Huntington, Indiana) dated July 10, 1872.