4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL AUGUST 30, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Frontier murder case
One year after the Civ-
il
War ended, a double
For The Sentinel
murder happened in Linn
County. And it was one of
those stories that seems to peel away like an on-
ion, layer by layer, or like one of those Russian
nesting dolls — in fact, even today, it’s almost
certain that the full story isn’t known.
Here’s how it got started:
On March 9, 1866, a resident of the Browns-
ville area named James Cunningham saddled up
and paid a visit to his neighbors, Sidney and Bar-
bara Presley Smith.
The Smiths were a particularly prosperous
pioneer family. Sidney was 42, Barbara 30; the
couple had four children, ranging in age from
16-year-old Rhoda Ann to baby Edward.
They were especially prosperous just then,
because it was the height of the Idaho gold rush
of the early 1860s, and Sidney had just returned
from the gold fi elds — where he had been very
successful.
Sidney had been able to go to the gold fi elds
because Thomas had been around, to stay home
and run the farm while he was gone. Thomas had
lived on the farm, taking care of business, until
Sidney’s return, at which time he’d moved out to
stay with a neighbor.
Upon his return, Sidney had hidden his gold on
the farm — banks were few and far between in
1860s Oregon, and those that did exist weren’t al-
ways trustworthy.
So, with a successful farm and a big stash of
cash, the extended Smith family seemed to have
it made.
Which was just one of the reasons Cunningham
was surprised to learn, from Thomas Smith, that
Sydney had suddenly gone nuts, pulled a revolv-
er, murdered his wife, then shot himself — all in
front of Thomas and the kids.
The sheriff was called in, and took everyone’s
By Finn JD John
statements. The kids, understandably, were terri-
fi ed — having just witnessed what they had.
But then one of the two older girls overcame
her terror and asked the sheriff a simple question:
“How could Papa kill Mama when he was dead
already?”
The implication that she knew more about the
sequence of the murders than she had previously
said was not lost on the sheriff. He questioned all
the kids again, closely and by themselves, and a
new story emerged:
It turned out that Thomas and Sydney had had
an argument earlier in the day. This had been an
increasingly common thing since Sidney had re-
turned from the gold fi elds, and probably had led
to Thomas moving out of the house. Remember,
Thomas had stayed behind to run the farm while
Sidney went to the diggings, and Sidney had
come back with a lot of gold. Thomas felt, not un-
reasonably, that some of that gold should belong
to him, since without him it would not have been
possible for Sidney to go dig it up; Sidney dis-
agreed. It had become a source of some tension.
Today, that tension seemed to have come to a
head. In the account given by the children, Thom-
as, snarling “This will not do me,” stormed out of
the house. And then, several minutes later, Rhoda
Ann, sitting with her back to the door, was startled
out of her chair by the roar of an indoor gunshot,
and saw a dark spot appear on her father’s fore-
head, right between the eyes. Sidney Smith fell
forward, dead.
Thomas fi red again, and this time the bullet
sped past the baby’s head and hit Barbara in the
chest. Barbara, wounded badly but not fatally,
laid the baby on the fl oor and ran out of the house;
Thomas followed, caught her up at the woodpile,
dragged her into a smokehouse, and stabbed her
to death.
Then he came back into the house and promised
to kill all the kids if they didn’t swear that their fa-
ther had killed their mother and then shot himself.
The terrifi ed children did as instructed — but
at least one, probably 10-year-old Leora, didn’t
fully understand what Thomas was asking them to
do; hence the inconvenient (for Thomas) question
about how Papa could have killed Mama when he
was already dead.
But by the time this question was being asked,
the sheriff was already suspicious. He’d noticed
an absence of powder burns around the hole in
Sidney’s forehead, which absolutely ruled out the
suicide theory. He had already decided maybe
Thomas ought to be questioned again.
Thomas was — and when he confessed, a third
layer of this awful onion was exposed.
Thomas told the sheriff that the whole thing had
come about because he had been having “an af-
fair” with his oldest niece, Rhoda Ann, then 16.
Rhoda Ann had, he said, “confessed the affair” to
her mother, who had told Sydney about it when
he came back from the gold fi elds. Her father, fu-
rious, had staged a confrontation. Rhoda Ann had
refused to cooperate, so Sydney had started beat-
ing her; and Thomas, in defense of his incestuous
“lover,” had murdered her father, after which he’d
gone ahead and murdered Barbara too.
Obviously, this left a few questions unanswered.
The peculiar savagery with which Thomas at-
tacked Barbara — slashing her face and hands be-
fore fatally stabbing her in the neck — argued for
more personal feeling than he was admitting to.
A modern reader can hardly fail to draw certain
conclusions from Uncle Thomas’s story, especial-
ly in Oregon in the aftermath of the Neil Gold-
schmidt case. It’s clear that the “affair” was child
molestation, started by Thomas after Sidney left
for the gold fi elds and left the Smith women and
children in his care.
(Knowing this, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion
that the reason for Thomas’s savagery in cutting
up Barbara with the knife was that he had tried to
make a move on her, and been rejected.)
Then Sidney had returned, and learned what
he’d done. Now both his victim’s parents knew
what he’d done … and what he was. So he’d mur-
dered both of them so that they could not expose
him. Then, when he’d been exposed anyway, he’d
tried to paint poor Rhoda Ann as a “scarlet wom-
an,” a teen-age temptress who had seduced him.
It’s hard to say from the newspapers’ accounts
whether or not anyone bought this. It seems likely
they did not. But, it would be nice to know what
became of Rhoda Ann after all her family’s dirty
laundry was aired in the newspaper and she was
publicly accused of seducing her uncle.
Regardless of whether people understood the
true nature of the “affair,” there was widespread
agreement that Uncle Thomas needed to die, and
the outcome of the trial was never in doubt. A
hanging was scheduled for May 10, 1866 — and
on that very morning, the newspapers carried the
word of Thomas Smith’s other brother, Calvin,
who was still in the gold fi elds of Idaho. He had,
apparently, committed suicide. Thomas was the
only surviving Smith brother.
That changed a little later that day, just 62 days
after the double murder — still a record in Oregon
history. That’s when, nattily dressed in frock coat
and leather boots, Thomas Smith dropped through
the gallows trap door into eternity.
There is a postscript to this story, though.
Sometime after the execution, the orphans were
out playing on the Smith farm, and one of them
found a leather bag with $25,000 in gold dust —
obviously the proceeds from the gold prospecting
trip that had taken Sidney away from his farm,
his wife, and his daughter. In 1866, $25,000 was
a tremendous fortune; but it’s surely safe to say
that if Sidney could have turned back time, know-
ing what it would cost him to acquire it, he would
have turned that money down.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Is coffee good or bad for you?
You’ll be happy to know that
getting up and enjoying a cup
of your favorite coffee is fi ne,
however that’s where it must
end. The problem lies in reach-
ing multiple times a day for that
cup brimming with caffeine.
Although one cup of coffee per
day is not likely to cause any
signifi cant health problems, it
is clear that excessive consump-
tion of caffeinated beverages is
dangerous.
Coffee is known to contribute
to heart disease by raising blood
pressure, LDL cholesterol, and
homocysteine.1-4 Furthermore,
a seventeen-year study of over
40,000 people found that those
who drank more than four cups
of coffee per day were at an in-
creased risk of death from any
cause. Men under age 55 that
drank that much coffee had a 56
percent increase in risk of death,
and women more than doubled
their risk.5
Coffee interferes with sleep.
The caffeine in coffee is a stim-
ulant and as such gives you a
false sense of increased energy,
allowing you to get by with an
inadequate amount of sleep. In
addition to affecting the quanti-
ty of sleep, caffeine also reduces
the depth of sleep. Inadequate
sleep promotes disease and pre-
mature aging, and can fuel over-
eating behaviors.
Sleep deprivation also results
in higher levels of the stress
hormone cortisol and interferes
with glucose metabolism, lead-
ing to insulin resistance.6 This
insulin resistance, and subse-
quent higher baseline glucose
level, further promotes diabetes,
heart disease and other prob-
lems.
People who drink caffein-
ated beverages are likely to
eat more often than necessary
because they mistake caffeine
withdrawal symptoms—such
as shakiness, headaches, light-
headedness, etc.—for hunger.
These detoxifi cation symptoms
are easily mistaken for hunger
because eating temporarily sup-
presses them. It is impossible to
get in touch with your body's
true hunger signals if you are
addicted to stimulants.
There are thousands of dif-
ferent substances in coffee, not
just caffeine. Certainly, caffeine
is dangerous in large quantities,
but decaffeinated coffee also has
potentially harmful side effects.
Both decaffeinated and regular
coffees have cholesterol rais-
ing effects, and these effects are
known to be due to constituents
in coffee other than caffeine.7
Also, these effects are amplifi ed
as the number of cups of coffee
consumed per day goes up. The
chemical substances used to re-
move the caffeine may be haz-
ardous. Drinking decaffeinated
coffee is also associated with
the risk of developing rheuma-
toid arthritis, possibly due to the
caffeine-removing additives.8
For this reason, it is probably
safer to choose a water-pro-
cessed decaf if you choose to
drink decaffeinated coffee.
As for the claim that cof-
fee protects against diabetes, a
small decrease in risk (7 per-
cent) of type 2 diabetes has been
shown with each additional cup
of coffee consumed per day.9
Similar results are seen for de-
caffeinated and regular coffee,
so caffeine is likely not the sub-
stance responsible for this ben-
efi t. Actually, in the short term,
caffeine impairs the body’s sen-
sitivity to insulin; decaffeinated
coffee also has an insulin de-
sensitizing effect, but to a lesser
degree compared to caffeinated
coffee.10
Since coffee also raises blood
pressure, LDL cholesterol, and
homocysteine, it is not a good
idea to rely on coffee to protect
you from diabetes. The best pro-
tection against diabetes is main-
taining a healthy weight with a
nutrient dense, plant based diet
and regular exercise.
In summary, coffee is most
like a drug, not a food. Like
most drugs it may have some
minor benefi ts, but its toxic ef-
fects and resultant risks over-
whelm those minor advantag-
es. Caffeine is a stimulant and
a long and healthy life is most
consistently achieved when we
avoid stimulants and drugs and
meet our nutritional needs with
as little exposure to toxicity as
possible. If you do drink coffee
it is best to limit to one cup per
day, and if you drink decaffein-
ated coffee, choose water pro-
cessed.
C ottage G rove
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