1833: It was a beautiful summer day in June, sunshine and blue skies after a cold and damp spring. A welcome sight indeed and just in time for the little wild strawberries to ripen.
Young farmwife and mother Sally Cochran of north Pembroke set out to pick strawberries for her young children. She was accompanied by her husband’s farmhand of over three years’ time: 18-year-old Abraham Prescott. Setting off across the road to a field out of view of their farm, Sally began picking but would not fill her basket, for a short time later, Sally was dead, struck down by Abraham.
Shocking as this crime was, it was even more so considering that this wasn’t the first time that Abraham had tried to kill his employer. Six months earlier, Abraham had beaten both Sally and her husband Chauncey Cochran with the blunt side of an axe while they slept. He beat them both so soundly they were bloodied and unconscious for several hours. Chauncey’s eyes were swollen shut so that he could not see.
Despite the violence of the incident, the Cochrans retained Abraham as a farmhand, reasoning that Abraham wasn’t responsible for the beating because he had been sleepwalking when he attacked.
He had lived for over three years with the family, tending to the cattle and even offering to fetch water for Sally to save her the toil of toting heavy buckets.
Described by his employers as both obedient and kind but also bad tempered with the cattle, it seems Abraham had developed an unpredictable temperament. The family didn’t fault the boy for the attack but instead seemed content that the incident was an anomaly and not intentional. He stayed on living and working at the Cochran farm, life carrying on as though little had happened.
During the trial for the subsequent murder of Sally, Abraham’s lawyers used both the insanity defense and the sleepwalking defense. They referred to other examples of the mentally ill not being liable for their actions due to the budding understanding of mental health in the 19th century.
There was also the broad understanding from those that knew him that Abraham had a diminished mental capacity. Speculations ran from a brain injury during childhood from an infection that caused swelling in his head to a family history of insanity. Abraham was nevertheless found guilty — twice — and hanged for his crime, but the outcry against his execution would spur the founding of New Hampshire’s first mental institution.
A marker was erected marking the spot of Sally Cochran’s murder in the woods off North Pembroke Road near Ames Brook. She was buried not far from her home in the cemetery on North Pembroke Road.
