Throughout the nearly 60 years as the seat of Baltimore County’s government and court, Joppa was witness to a large number of criminal trials and executions. Many who died by the noose still lie in the old graveyard behind what is the Church of the Resurrection on Rumsey Island; the site of Old Joppa.
One of the most heinous crimes in early Maryland occurred in the year 1751 and Old Joppa played an important role in ensuring justice was served.
In what is now Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area near Liberty Reservoir, a very prosperous farmer named John Clark and his wife Sarah were viciously attacked in the wee hours of 20 Nov 1751 by an ax wielding servant woman and her accomplice after being coerced by a greedy and evil young man named John Berry. John Clark would survive his wounds, but his wife Sarah was killed instantly.
Berry was stepson to both Mr. and Mrs. Clark through the remarriages and deaths of his natural parents. Both Martha and Mary were indentured servants of the Clarks. By all accounts, John Berry couldn’t wait until his step-parents passed away naturally to inherit the large farm and the two women, who claimed that Mrs. Clark promised them freedom upon her death, couldn’t wait that long either. John Berry apparently promised to marry Martha Bassett if she would help him murder his step-parents.
Berry and the servants claimed that an intruder had attacked the Clarks. The investigating Sheriff’s Deputy was immediately suspicious of the servant’s tale and asked Martha Bassett, who was considered simpleminded, where the ax was. Without hesitation, she replied, “Hid behind a log in the swamp.” Once the bloodstained tool was found, Bassett confessed and implicated Mary Powell and Berry.
Unlike the often long, drawn out an expensive dispensing of justice today, it was swift in those days. John Berry and his two female accomplices, Martha Bassett, who swung the ax, and Mary Powell who held a candle, were convicted on 18 Dec 1751.
A 13 year old servant boy was also convicted, but later pardoned by the Governor. On 10 Jan 1752, the women were hanged at Joppa.
But the brutality of the crime so outraged the Governor’s Commission that it imposed a special penalty on Berry. It was ordered that after the sentence of hanging was carried out, his body was to be hung by chains until nature itself consumed it. It was common at that time to carry out the execution for such heinous crimes as murder, at the site of the offense.
It was a cold winter’s day when John Berry and a crowd of spectators climbed the hill. Berry continued to protest his innocence, declaring that the two women had lied about his role. Although there is no surviving description of the execution, Berry probably stood on a barrel or in the back of a cart; the barrel kicked over or the cart set off, leaving him twisting on the gallows.
The ghostly legends began almost immediately afterwards; including tales of Berry’s restless spirit haunting the surrounding area even today, and that his skull was “kicked around” for years until a settler found it and finally gave it Christian burial.
Perhaps too, on some cold January night the cries of Martha and Mary can be heard echoing across the fields and marshes of Old Joppa……listen for them if you dare.
