CHARLES TOWN, WV (LOOTPRESS) – On Monday, Twenty-Third Judicial Circuit (Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties) Judge David Hammer gave a Jefferson County history lesson to 56 judges attending the 2021 Annual Conference of the National Association of Administrative Law Judges.
Judges attending the conference in Washington, D.C., traveled by bus to the West Virginia Eastern Panhandle. They toured Harpers Ferry, the John Brown execution site, and then came to the Jefferson County Courthouse. “I spoke to them for an hour about the history of the courthouse, including the John Brown trial and the Miners’ War treason trials. In appreciation, the NAALJ presented me with an Honorary Membership in the association,” Judge Hammer said.
“Many thanks to my law clerk, Linda Gutsell, for her research assistance and also to my wife, Effie Kallas, for her dramatic reading of the widow Mahala Doyle’s letter to John Brown:”
John Brown Sir
Altho vengeance is not mine, I confess, that I do feel gratified to hear that you ware stopt in your fiendish career at Harper’s Ferry, with the loss of your two sons, you can now appreciate my distress, in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing, you cant say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one, but has only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children while I feel for your folly. I do hope & trust that you will meet your just reward. O how it pained my Heart to hear the dying groans of my Husband and children if this scrawl give you any consolation you are welcome to it.
Mahala Doyle
NB my son John Doyle whose life I begged of (you) is now grown up and is very desirous to be at Charlestown on the day of your execution would certainly be there if his means would permit it, that he might adjust the rope around your neck if gov: Wise would permit it
M Doyle.
