McCaffary, John, House

About this property

The John McCaffary House is located in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. It was built in 1842 and was the site of the murder of Bridget McCaffary by her husband, John McCaffary. He was the first and only person executed by the State of Wisconsin before it abolished the death penalty in 1853. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1978. The John McCaffary House was built in 1842 in what was, at the time, the outskirts of Kenosha. It is a two-story house with three rooms on each floor. It was constructed with cream-colored bricks and features a three-window facade, a low hip roof, and a simple cornice featuring a sawtooth pattern. On July 23, 1850, John McCaffary murdered his wife Bridget by drowning her in the cistern behind the house. The couple had been married less than two years at the time and their marriage was reportedly tumultuous, with neighbors reporting domestic disturbances (broken dishes and furniture) and shouting at the house prior to the murder. The Kenosha Telegraph reported that the cistern itself "was but the diameter of a hogshead, and the water was but 20 in (51 cm) deep." Both before and during a brief trial in May 1851, John McCaffary maintained his innocence. On May 23, a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death in accordance with the mandatory death penalty that existed in Wisconsin at the time. On August 21, 1851, McCaffary admitted to the murder on the scaffold, and was then executed publicly by hanging in front of a crowd of 2,000–3,000 people. His neck did not immediately break, and he struggled violently for eight minutes and ultimately lived for almost 20 minutes before he was pronounced dead on the scaffold. The execution strengthened the growing movement against capital punishment in Wisconsin, which had been prominent since the territorial period in what became Wisconsin as well as other former portions of the Northwest Territory. However, prior to statehood in 1848, the Wisconsin Territory had executed four people. The leader of the local and state opposition to the death penalty was Kenosha Telegraph newspaperman, and future politician and inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Latham Sholes. The day after McCaffary's execution, Sholes wrote in the Telegraph: "We hope that this will be the last execution that shall ever disgrace the mercy-expecting citizens of the State of Wisconsin." He elaborated: "We do not complain that the law has been enforced. We complain that the law exists." Later in 1851, Sholes was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly. Waukesha County farmer Marvin H. Bovee, who would soon join Sholes in the legislature, was of similar mind and in favor of a national ban on the death penalty. Both Bovee and Sholes were instrumental in Wisconsin's abolition of capital punishment.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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