Old Albrightsville Cemetery

 

I have on many occasions fallen into the deep hole called Ancestry. A few months ago I came across the "find a grave" website, which is a good site if looking for a grave, duh! This website looks for people to photograph graves in your area. Since I always have my camera, I signed up. Seemed easy enough. First one took me to an old cemetery called Freytown.  The cemetery is on a back country pothole infested road and all the graves were unmarked as you can see from the picture. So that was a bust. 

Next go around was to a small cemetery in Albrightsville. So old and small that it was not easy to find through google searches. Luckily a guest at the hotel was familiar with the area and was able to find it and off I went in search of the headstone.  The last person to be buried in that cemetery was buried back in I believe it was 1976. So this fine gentleman I was looking for couldn't have been buried there, he died in 2019.

Another busted adventure or so I thought. While there I came across a Monument to a Aquila Henning Sr. It seemed to have a story etched into the head stone, along with the words "An Innocent soul sent to Eternity"  but what did it all mean? Like most tales, fables, hearsay, the victor tells the story and its handed down from generation to generation. This is the story that I was able to find. Is it true, one will never know because we were not there and time smooths out all the rough edges and what's left is well, legend.

So here's the story that I have been able to find out:

Aquila Jr. was arrested for illegal hunting by Harry Wilkinson (the deputy game warden & school teacher). Harry and Sr. had heated words and it was a toxic environment to be around these two individuals. 

On the fateful day, Thanksgiving 1932, The Henning boys were out hunting. At the same time in the same woods was Harry, his brother Robert along with seven others who I guess are depicted in the etching but were not identified or not worthy enough to be part of the story. 

Story goes that Harry's hunting party was first aware of Henning's group from a single rifle shot. The shot wounding Harry's hunting dog. While Harry was bent over the dog, Aquila step up on a stump and took aim at Harry but the shot missed Harry. For dramatic effect, I'm going to add just barely missing him. But this attempted murder didn't go unnoticed, no Robert saw the whole thing and took aim at Aquila and fired, he's buckshot hit his target in the back.  Aquila didn't die (spoiler alert....yet).

Harry and Morris Getz (party of the hunting party) took Aquila to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries but (dramatic pause) not before giving a brief statement that he did NOT shoot the dog or try to shoot Harry. 

Like in the TV shows, Robert turned himself in and in January of 1933 the trial began.  Though Robert might have turned himself in he did turn his testimony around during the trial. He had said a month earlier that he had heard that Jr was making threats against the Wilkinson's dogs. Now he was saying he never saw the Henning's before the day of the shooting. After a week of testimony the jury came back with a NOT GUILTY. The jury didn't deny that he shot Aquila but he only did it to save brother's life. 

A year later, dressed in black, the widow, Annie Henning, was back in court this time against the New York Life Insurance company. She refused to take the $4,000 policy but was holding out for the double indemnity clause she felt she was owed. Sadly the courts didn't agree with her.

So that would be the end of the tale.... nope there was more, of course there's more. The bitterness continued between the families. 5 1/2 years later when the Wenz Memorial Company  who provided a stone for the grave had an etching put onto the stone portraying a different version of the murder or ambush, not the official one but the one that Aquila's widow believed from her husbands account he stated before he died. The company replaced the words "Died" with "shot". 

Well Harry sued the Company for damages, claiming that the engraving was all a lie to make him look bad. In the engraving he is depicted as the shooter not his brother and the other seven men are hiding in the bushes to ambush the Henning Boys. He lost the case. I guess you can put what ever you want on a grave and no one can stop you. 

 So the mystery is really what happened on November 23, 1932. Was it self defense or cold blooded murder. We will never know.....

Here is a closer look at the etching. 

See you at the next bend in the road,

Kelli

* newspaper articles are from Cultured Carbon County 

other sources: the guest at hotel, freepages,