Hardly anyone alive today has ever heard the name John Scott Harrison. However, John Scott Harrison has the distinction of being the only man in American history whose father and son both became President of the United States. John Scott Harrison’s father was William Henry Harrison the 9th President and his son Benjamin Harrison became the 23rd President.
On May 25, 1878 John Scott Harrison died suddenly at his home located close to North Bend, Ohio about 16 miles west of Cincinnati. Funeral services were held in Cleves, Ohio on May 29th. There were two funeral sermons. In the crowd was the family of John Scott Harrison and in particular was his highly successful lawyer son from Indianapolis, Benjamin Harrison who was already at the helm of the Indiana Republican party. Interment was in the Congress Green Cemetery where the Harrison family plot and vault was located on a hill commanding a broad and beautiful view of the Ohio River Valley.
As the funeral party walked to John Scott’s grave it was noticed that the resting place of 23 year old Augustus Devin, a nephew of Benjamin Harrison, who had just been buried himself less than a week before John Scott’s death, had been disturbed. Though placed in his grave only the Saturday before indications were that Devin’s grave had been robbed by body snatchers. This discovery made two precautions necessary: one was to hide the fact from Devin’s widowed mother until the body could be recovered and the other was to take additional safety measures for safeguarding John Scott Harrison’s remains. To this end Benjamin Harrison together with his younger brother John supervised the actual lowering of his father’s body into an eight-foot-long grave. At the bottom, as a secure receptacle for the metallic casket was a brick vault with thick walls and a stone bottom. Three flat stones were procured for a cover.
Benjamin Harrison took a train back to Indianapolis late on the day of his father’s funeral so that he might have a few days to finish his address which would open up the Republican State Convention. The next morning, armed with a search warrant, John Harrison and his cousin George Eaton started their search. They were aided by a Constable Lacey and a Detective named Snelbaker. The search began at the Ohio Medical College. Apart from the general fear that the robbers might have been in collusion with the medical school their only actual clue was indeed a weak one. That morning they were informed a wagon had passed through the alley of the college building and had stopped at the door where all anatomical bodies were dumped, this information did not necessarily suggest that young Devin’s body was there, both Harrison and Eaton supposed that their young kinsman’s body had been sold much earlier in the same week; and as will be seen they were absolutely correct.
At the suggestion of the police officials, a close search of the college began. An obnoxious protesting janitor named A.Q. Marshall showed them the various rooms of the college but he stoutly maintained that no bodies were to be found.
At last when the building had been thoroughly searched, John and George were ready to look elsewhere. Constable Lacey, however, noticed a rope attached to the windlass. Immediately he ordered Detective Snelbaker to haul it up. At last there emerged into the light a body. A cloth covered only the head and shoulders of what appeared to be the body of a very old man.
John Harrison dismissed the discovery because Augustus Devin was a very young man. In any event the body was placed on the floor and Lacey removed the cloth. As he did Harrison caught sight of the dead man’s face and exclaimed in horror that the dead body was none other than his father, John Scott Harrison!
The terrible sight sickened him physically and tortured him emotionally. The scene was almost beyond belief. Still deeply agitated John Harrison engaged the Cincinnati undertaking firm of Estep & Meyer to care for his father’s body until he could consult with his older brothers and other family members. Above all he was determined to keep the matter secret.
Secrecy, though highly desirable, was doomed to failure. A reporter from the Cincinnati Commercial learned the startling fact from the fire department boys next to the medical college. The reporter tracked down Harrison, Eaton, and the Estep & Meyer Undertakers, but to no avail. Nobody talked and the undertakers who had been sworn to silence would not even admit that it was John Scott Harrison’s corpse which had been uncovered. Before long, the news broke – not from Cincinnati but from North Bend. Relatives had visited the Harrison tomb early in the morning and learned for themselves the distressing news.
Young Archie Eaton was sent immediately to Cincinnati to apprize his brother George and his uncle John, the searchers for Devin’s body, that they now faced a far holier task in seeking to recover the stolen body of John Scott Harrison. At the last moment Carter Harrison decided to join Archie in the short trip to Cincinnati.
The subsequent meeting of the two Harrison brothers in Cincinnati was one of the strangest in history. Benjamin Harrison had literally only arrived in Indianapolis when he was urgently called back to Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Police efforts availed little.
Just before Benjamin arrived from Indianapolis his older brother Carter decided to make a visit to the Ohio Medical College to examine the spot where his father’s body had been discovered. At the college he encountered Dr. W. M. Seely who was the Secretary of the Medical College as well as a Professor. It was a terribly unfortunate meeting. The physician, who was already incensed by the newspaper criticism leveled at the medical college and the faculty had the indelicacy of remarking to the grief stricken Carter Harrison that the entire affair really mattered little since it would all be the same for everyone on the day of resurrection. Neither the public nor the Harrison’s would forget nor forgive that remark.
Before Benjamin arrived his brother Carter swore out a warrant for the arrest of A.Q. Marshall the janitor at the college. Marshall was arrested on the charge of receiving, concealing, and secreting John Scott Harrison’s body which had been taken unlawfully and maliciously from its grave. Marshall was no sooner committed to cell 61 at the Hamilton County Jail than the entire college faculty rushed to his defense.
While the public argued both sides of the controversy the body of John Scott Harrison was quietly re-interred in the vault of Jacob Strader who was a close family friend of the Harrison’s, at Spring Grove Cemetery. Reports of John Scott Harrison’s reburial helped to keep alive public indignation in the Queen City. Crowds milled in and out of the alley attempting to peer into the now celebrated cadaver chute.
The mystery of Devin’s body went unsolved until Friday, June 14th when a clue eventually broke. In the ensuing weeks medical professors from both the Ohio Medical College and the Miami Medical College both in Cincinnati admitted that like most other medical schools in the country they were under contract with “certain persons” who would guarantee a yearly supply of cadavers for dissection and anatomical demonstration. It was during these conversations that the fact leaked out that Cincinnati was a shipping center for this “dead traffic,” which moved on to smaller cities like Fort Wayne and Ann Arbor.
On June 14th another janitor, but this time from the Miami Medical School cracked and confessed collusion with the notorious resurrectionist Charles Morton, Gabriel, Dr. Morton, Dr. Christian, and Dr. Gordon.
The janitor confessed that when Miami Medical College recessed for the summer Dr. Morton had bribed him to use the medical building basement as headquarters before preparing and shipping bodies to other cities. It was an excellent hiding place as well as an efficient workshop. Consequently the good doctor Morton had worked for about a month and in that time Augustus Devin and John Scott Harrison were two of his clients.
The janitor also revealed that many bodies had been prepared and shipped from Cincinnati to the Medical College at Ann Arbor, Michigan, but the address on the barrels containing the cadaver’s read “Quimby and Co.” “Quimby & Co.” as was suspected, proved to be a blind by which the Michigan medical school avoided suspicion and detection. All shipments addressed had been delivered to the college and signed for by college employees. The police made a quick check of the May and June arrivals and in short order they were convinced that young Devin’s body, stolen on May 22, had been shipped from the Miami Medical College on May 24 and had arrived in Ann Arbor on May 25. In no time the police identified one of the cadaver’s as that of young Devin and a telegram was sent immediately to the family.
Young Devin’s remains were expected at North Bend at 10:00 a.m. on June 16, 1878. Long before the scheduled arrival and despite the threatening skies better than 500 people gathered to follow the body for the second time to the grave in the family plot in Congress Green Cemetery. Shortly before ten, word came that the body would not arrive for another twenty-four hours. This announcement caused no little disappointment and impatience in a community eager and bent upon seeing the body reverently buried again.
Long after the funeral cortege had left the scene there remained around the sacred enclosure a volunteer guard composed entirely of citizens. This was a practice instituted the night after the robbery of John Scott Harrison’s grave.
In December 1879 the body of John Scott Harrison was reinterred without ceremony in the Harrison Family Tomb by Estep & Meyer Undertaker’s for a charge of $4.00. He rests in this tomb to this very day.
On the funeral side of things as a direct result of the Harrison Horror, Andrew Van Bibber who was an inventor in Cincinnati in 1878 invented what he called the “mort-safe” and patented the device. It was the first attempt towards developing the modern burial vault. On the heels of Van Bibber’s invention in 1879, George W. Boyd of Springfield, Ohio patented the first metal grave vault to use the air bell principle to seal. The purpose of both of these vaults was to stop the incidences of grave robbing.
So often today we say that the use of the burial vault is to protect the remains – from the elements found in the ground. True to be sure, but historically the burial vault was developed to protect the remains, not from the elements in the ground, but from grave robbers. It is strange how the purpose of inventions change over time.