Disturbed: Tolland’s Gilmore Murders
When elderly Henry Jordan of Otis, Massachusetts, went to the Gilmore home in nearby Tolland on Friday, September 29, 1916, to see about retrieving a borrowed gun, he found the bodies of the Widow Gilmore, her son Edward, and her daughter Anna, in a small bedroom on the first floor, along with three empty shells from a double-barrel shotgun.
Mr. Martin lent the gun to Edward, but his frequent knocks at the Gilmore door for its return went unanswered, so he enlisted the help of Mr. Jordan, who had known the Gilmores for quite some time.
Authorities believed that the twenty-seven-year-old Edward went temporarily insane and shot and killed his mother and sister on Thursday, September 28, before taking his own life. Edward shot his mother, the Widow Gilmore, in the head and shot his sister Anna through her left eye. Because authorities found Edward's mother and sister undressed and in bed, they concluded they were asleep when he came home.
Clad only in trousers, Edward, on the floor by the door, had the whole left side of his head blown off. He had about $600.00 on him, $425 of which he got in New Boston from selling off all of his family's livestock, except for a single large white horse. Investigators determined that Edward shot himself by tying a cord around his big toe and the other end to the trigger.
On Friday afternoon, the medical examiner had the bodies removed to Gibbons's undertaking establishment in Granville. When the sheriff later returned to the Gilmore farm, the white horse stood motionless at the backdoor except to occasionally gaze down the road - looking in the direction that the bodies were carried.
Edward had been reportedly acting strange since his sister, Lydia, was taken back to the Northampton State Hospital (for the insane) a week prior. Authorities also committed Edward's uncle.
Edward worked for a clock factory in Winsted, Connecticut. He wanted to move his mother and sister there, but their hesitation may have caused their demise. Authorities discovered that Edward recently paid a month's rent for an apartment for himself, his mother, and his sister in Winsted.
When Edward's father, Rufus, died from pneumonia on November 25, 1915, he became the executor of his estate. Edward recently accepted a $25.00 deposit which bound the contract of sale on the family's Tolland farm for $1,800, which would have required the signatures of his mother and sister (possibly his grandmother too). Their refusal to sign meant no clear title.
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| Gilmore Family Plot |
Lydia died in the Grafton State Hospital for the chronic insane in Grafton, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1920. She was brought there two years earlier from the Northampton State Hospital. (Cause of death: pulmonary tuberculosis.)
During the October inquest into the triple shooting, Old Man Jordan said this wasn't the first time he found murdered bodies, but finding the Gilmores brought the total count to six.
In November 1924, a group of men working nearby claimed to have heard strange noises from the Gilmore farm. They also reported seeing white-robed figures walking about the unoccupied house. The workers were so terrified of what they witnessed that they refused to go past the Gilmore house after dark.
On July 2, 1908, a lightning bolt struck the Gilmore barn. It ripped off boards as it traveled down the side of the barn and through an open window before striking 16-year-old William Henry Gilmore, who was found dead with a burn mark the size of a pea on his left temple. The lightning strike also knocked out William's father and another man in the barn. The three just finished unloading hay from a cart. The lighting was close to the hayloft, but the barn didn't catch fire. Oxen attached to the cart in the barn fled. The oxen managed to get out of their harness. The oxen were found about a half-mile away. Measuring the distance the oxen traveled, investigators believe the men were unconscious for at least 15 minutes before waking up and finding young William dead.
Note: The Gilmore trail in the Tolland State Forest could be named for the aforementioned Gilmores, as the Gilmore property appears to have been absorbed into the state forest probably sometime between 1923 and 1925.