[92] Calvin Graves, who came to Cooperstown in 1794, and lived in the place for 84 years, is quoted as saying that he well knew Shipman, the Leather-Stocking of Cooper's novels, and that Shipman was never married. Graves said that he had often visited the old hunter's cave in company with him. This testimony seems to point to the Hoosick Shipman, who having deserted his family for twenty-six years, might easily pass for a bachelor in Otsego, and who is said to have lived in a cave, concerning which nothing is mentioned in the traditions of David Shipman.
CHAPTER XI
STRANGE TALES OF THE GALLOWS
At the eastern end of the main street of the village the bridge across the Susquehanna River commands a view for a short distance up and down the stream, far enough toward the north to glimpse its source in Otsego Lake, while to the south Fernleigh House appears, high amid the trees on the western bank, and the drifting current below is lost in foliage. Nearer at hand, as seen from the south side of the bridge, Riverbrink claims the eastern shore. Here stands a solemn-visaged house that looks down upon the scene of one of the most extraordinary dramas ever enacted beneath the gallows-tree.
Riverbrink
In the summer of 1805, on the flat a little below the place where the house now stands, the gibbet was erected for a public execution. The condemned man was Stephen Arnold, whose crime was committed in Burlington, in this county, during the previous winter. Arnold was a school teacher, and having no children of his own, had taken into his home Betsey Van Amburgh, a child six years of age. An ungovernable temper added a kind of ferocious zeal to the duty of educating this child, for it was her inability to pronounce the word "gig" according to his directions that brought the teacher to the gallows. Betsey insisted on pronouncing the word as "jig," and declared that she could not do otherwise. Whereupon Arnold took her out of the house into the severely cold evening air, and there whipped her naked body until he himself became cold. He then took her indoors to make her pronounce the word correctly, which she failed to do; and again she was taken out and whipped in the same manner. This act of brutality he repeated seven times, declaring that he "had as lieve whip her to death as not." The poor child languished four days, and expired.