Welcome to Essex: The Body-Snatching Borough

28 min readAug 28, 2022

Clam-frying, boat-building, grave-robbing our specialties

“…O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” — 1 Corinthians 15:55–57

Introduction

In 1634, Goodman Bradstreet and William White were the first Englishmen to homestead in the southwestern part of Ipswich, a town of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Native American name for the area was “Chebacco,” after a nearby lake. For the next fifty years it was an out of the way spot, sparsely settled, on the route to the village of Gloucester on Cape Ann.

For the next forty-odd years, residents of all ages in the Chebacco area were required to walk in any weather the six-plus mile footpath to Ipswich center for all-day Sunday services — no doubt a difficult journey. In addition, any members of the Chebacco community who passed away during this time were expected to be buried in the central Ipswich burial ground on the high street. The Chebacco deceased had to be carried on “a bier upon the shoulders of men” for the aforesaid six miles, no doubt a task even more arduous and distasteful.

To cut down their commute, the residents on the Chebacco side of town — now known as Essex — began the process of exploring self-determination. The two towns still can’t seem to agree on the exact timeline but, starting in 1673, Chebacco residents began to petition for their own meetinghouse and burial ground on their side of town. By 1680, Chebacco residents hired the Reverend John Wise to be their own preacher, set aside an acre-lot for their very own burial yard and officially became known as Ipswich’s Second Parish.

One-hundred thirty-eight years later, that local yard would become infamous for a set of events straight out of a Gothic horror novel — the largest recorded multiple grave-robbing in 19th Century New England. But it’s more than a creepy story of desecration during our nation’s youth. The tale of the Body Snatcher of Chebacco Parish also touches on class, ambition, slavery, politics, and second chances in life.

The aspiring doctor comes to town

Thomas Sewall, son of Thomas and Priscilla Coney Sewall, was born on April 16, 1786, in Hallowell, Maine, a small village on the Kennebec River next to Augusta. A bright and diligent student with an interest in medicine, 21-year-old Sewall moved to Massachusetts in 1807, attending lectures at Harvard Medical School and studying under the renowned Boston doctor Dr. John Jeffries (1744–1819). Sewall exceled in his studies, winning a prize in 1810 for his dissertation on “Diseases of the Breasts of Nursing Women.” He travelled to Philadelphia to attend lectures by Dr. Benjamin Rush. On August 26th, 1812, Sewall graduated from Harvard Medical School and later that fall was elected to become a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

Upon moving to Massachusetts Sewall boarded at the home of Miriam Foster Choate on what is now Spring Street in Essex. Miriam was a recent widow who had married into the large and prosperous Choate family. The Choates were one of the “first families” of Chebacco, settling the area in the 1600’s and a clan that included judges, ship captains and Revolutionary War heroes. The family owned multiple properties in town in including an island on Essex Bay. Miriam’s husband had recently purchased the Spring Street home before he passed.

No doubt Mrs. Choate welcomed the addition of the handsome, dark-haired medical student not just for whatever payment he made and chores around the house he performed but also for his acting as a tutor for two of her six children — David Jr. and Rufus. Sewall instructed the precocious boys Latin and other subjects and maintained a lifelong friendship with his two students.

Which isn’t perhaps too surprising, for they were also brothers-in-law. When Sewall moved into the Choate house in 1809, Miriam’s oldest daughter Mary was seventeen. Thomas Sewall and Mary Choate caught each other’s eye, and the match must have met the approval of the maternal landlord, for they married on November 28, 1813. They didn’t move far — the “Choate House” was in fact a handsome clapboard double-house, so there was plenty of room.

For the next five years the young doctor and his bride settled down to a life of domestic bliss, community engagement and professional success. In 1818, Dr. Sewall became the Second Parish treasurer. Proficient in his ministrations and well-respected as the community doctor, Dr. Sewall’s medical practice was thriving.

A bit of context

By the first decade of the 19th Century, the Chebacco’s 1,207 residents had successfully managed a level of self-determination as Ipswich’s Second Parish for over a century. They had their own meetinghouse and pastor — the latest being the Reverend Robert Crowell, hired in 1814. They had their own burial ground. Although the trek to the town center was less frequent, they were still technically, legally, and financially part of Ipswich, and not happy about it, which is why they were considering a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature to break off and form their own town. Dr. Sewall in fact was a member of the committee in charge of the petition process.

Meanwhile, the medical profession in the young United States of America — particularly in New England — is booming. Medical schools are springing up in the cities, with thousands of students eager to attend. Recent medical school graduates like our Dr. Sewall are setting up family practices in town and villages. Some — again like our Dr. Sewall — are acting as “preceptors,” which means that they are willing to provide clinical training to aspiring medical students before they head off to med school. And some of course — like our Dr. Sewall — are anatomists, i.e., proficient in the training and practice of anatomy. In fact, Dr. Sewall has a side gig as an anatomy lecturer to local students.

Now if you’re going to teach anatomy, there is only so much you can explain using a dog-eared, shared textbook. You’re going to need some “hands-on” practice dissecting a human body or preferably, bodies. (More bodies = more practice)

Who’s going to find them for you?

Icky! Why would you rob a grave anyway?

The term “grave-robbing” is incorrect– in English and American jurisprudence, a dead human body isn’t property. (1) If you’re only interested in taking the body and not the clothes or jewelry, a robbery technically hasn’t been committed. The more correct term for a person who digs bodies up from a graveyard for anatomical dissection is “body-snatcher” or, in 19th Century parlance, a “Resurrection man.” But how did this “resurrecting” become if not an official career choice, but a profitable side gig?

Adam Smith summed it up nicely in his 1776 theory on demand and supply:

· More Americans are becoming aspiring medical students and doctors (the demand)

· Aspiring medical students and doctors need to understand human anatomy

· The best way to understand human anatomy is to dissect a human body

· Somebody needs to provide human bodies for medical students and doctors to dissect. (the supply)

Capitalist market forces at work!

In both English common law and colonial law known as the Body of Liberties (no pun intended), the only legal means of obtaining a cadaver in New England was that of an executed criminal, and that was only at the discretion of the sentencing judge. When dueling became a crime, slain duelists became a potential option. The 1784 Massachusetts anti-dueling law specified that a county coroner was required to either a) bury the body of a slain duelist in a public place without a coffin and with a stake driven through its heart or b) hand it over to a doctor or anatomist for dissection. Dissection was in effect, part and parcel of a shameful punishment. But there still weren’t enough executed criminals and slain duelists lying around for all the aspiring American medical students and doctors to study.

Why was dissection seen as a shameful punishment? It goes back to Christian theology. At the Second Coming of Jesus, He will raise the bodies of the dead in the flesh for Judgement Day. It’s why bodies in Christian cemeteries such as in New England are typically buried facing East — to face the Resurrection. (2) If you’re going to be resurrected in the flesh, naturally it follows that you’d want your mortal remains in a complete set in their proper place — the grave. Although the Bible does not mention the subject, many Christians considered cremation sinful because it destroyed the body. Same for anatomical dissection — if your dead body got sliced up by doctors or students and the bits scattered here and there and eventually burned, buried, put in a pickle jar, or otherwise thrown into a dumpster, there’s nothing whole to resurrect. If you’re dissected, you can’t get into Heaven!

Thus, a body-snatcher or Resurrection Man is preemptively muscling in on the Savior’s role and raising up a body not for eternal life but for scientific inquiry and of course, perhaps a bit of filthy lucre, damming a soul for all eternity in the process. This job is not only physically gross and morally repugnant, it’s also pretty much as sacrilegious as it gets.

Robert Louis Stevenson in his 1884 story The Body Snatcher sums up the prevailing attitude about this profession:

“…The Resurrection Man — to use the byname of the period — was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the offerings and inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighborhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled from natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys.”

Let’s get back to Adam Smith and the law of supply and demand. Religious scruples be damned; anatomical resurrection is a growth industry! American patriot and Revolutionary War hero Dr. Joseph Warren, who perished at the Battle of Bunker Hill, founded the “Spunkers Club” at Harvard Medical School in 1770. (3) Its specific purpose was to snatch dead bodies for anatomy classes. And this isn’t some frat-boys-gone-bad organization; it included among its members the founder of the medical school, Joseph’s brother John. It included Patriot Sam Adam’s son and William Eustis, future Governor of Massachusetts. All the Bright Young Things at Harvud are in the resurrection business, either hiring subcontractors or doing a little digging themselves.

Clearly this became a problem, for in 1815 the Mass Legislature passed “The Act to Protect The Sepulchers of the Dead.” its first law against body snatching. It was a felony offense, with penalties of fines up to $1000, imprisonment for up to a year and even the possibility of a public whipping. But an estimated fifteen thousand New England men and women became doctors in the 19th century. That’s a lot of doctors.

They need a lot of bodies.

But if you’re going to do it, what’s the best way?

Kids, please don’t try this at home (or anywhere else)

Being a successful Resurrection Man required a certain technique and, if followed carefully, the chance of detection or capture was slim.

Typically, Resurrection Men worked in teams of three. Select accomplices who are able-bodied and can do a burst of physical exertion quickly. A practiced team of resurrection professionals can disinter a body and restore the grave to its previous condition within an hour.

Step 1: Find a dying person or advance knowledge of an upcoming burial.

This is obviously fairly easy if you are affiliated with the medical profession.

If you are procuring a body for a medical college, send a message (in code, please) via an intermediary (typically a druggist or medical supply tradesman) to alert the college’s body provider (typically a professor of anatomy) of the new product about to hit the market. Arrange for payment and delivery in a secure manner.

You don’t need to be picky and choose bodies that died of a particular disease — most medical students and doctors are most interested in practice and don’t have the skills to identify a particular pathology anyway.

Step 2: Reconnoiter the territory

Locate the intended burial spot. Remote burial yards with verdant concealment are ideal. Cemeteries near a town center are problematic due to increased traffic and risk of observation.

Locate the grave of the subject. This is typically done during daylight hours, perhaps by attending the internment ceremony if your presence won’t attract undue attention. Note the location of the grave, it’s position relative to entrances, notable landmarks and nearby places of concealment and or out of the way roadways.

Step 3: Chose the date and time for the resurrection

Ideally, you’ll want to exhume the corpse as soon as possible after the burial — the next night following the internment, if possible. In an era before embalming, the corpse needed to be dissected quickly before decomposition sets in.

Resurrection can be done all throughout the year excepting the hottest periods of summer (when decomposition is faster) and the coldest periods of winter (ground is covered in deep snow or frozen). Ideally, plan your exhumations to coincide with the class sessions of a local medical college — typically from November to February.

For obvious reasons, you’ll want to plan your excursion when no one is around — late at night or in the wee hours of the morning before dawn when most people are asleep. Have a care about the weather — snow on the ground will prevent your operation, but a snowfall after the event is ideal to cover the tracks of men and wagons. Bright moonlight will be useful for illumination but increases the risk of detection.

Step 4: Good equipment makes great memories

Care must be taken to bring along the correct conveyance and tools to ensure a successful exhumation. You will need

· Some sort of conveyance (e.g. a horse and wagon) that provides an ideal mix of speed and quotidian character in case an alibi is required

· A shaded lamp (to provide illumination but not be visible from certain angles/far away)

· Two large canvas tarps. One tarp needs to be big enough to handle roughly 36 cubic feet of dirt, the other tarp big enough to wrap a body.

· One or two shovels

· An auger

· Some sort of long iron bar, curved and tapered at one end — it’s not clear if a specialized resurrection tool was manufactured (probably not) but at any rate a cant hook, used in the logging and shipbuilding industries, may be employed.

· Rope

· Canvas sling (optional; see below)

· Nerves of steel

A sociopathic lack of conscience, is perhaps not necessary, but preferred

Prior to debarking the cart, make sure that the equipment is wrapped in the tarps. Be careful that the wrapped tools do not make any clanking noises as you carry them.

Step 5: The Resurrection

Approach the graveyard with your accomplices via your conveyance. Park the wagon in a nearby concealed spot and have one accomplice mind the horse or donkey and act as a lookout. You and the other accomplice enter the graveyard and stealthily move towards the grave of your intended subject.

Quickly locate the grave. Relatives and friends of the deceased may have marked the gravesite in some special fashion as a bereavement ritual. Remove any flowers, shells, stones or identifying adornments on the grave. Note their exact location. Set aside in a safe spot for retrieval — they will need to be put back exactly as they were!

Spread one tarp on one side of the grave. This is for the dirt.

Spread the other tarp on the other side of the grave (if there is a headstone) or perhaps at the head of the grave (no headstone). This is for the body.

Start digging quickly. Since this is a fresh grave, the soil is presumably loose and easy to move. You’re not digging a 6’x3’ hole — too obvious — but something smaller — a 3’x3’x6’ hole at the head of the grave. Place the excavated soil onto the tarp, making sure none spills out onto the ground.

Dig till you reach the coffin.

When the top third of the coffin is reached and exposed to the air, use the auger to drill a set of holes across the width of the coffin at about shoulder level. The auger makes less noise than a hatchet or axe, is faster to use and requires less effort. Once you’ve dug the line of bore holes, a forceful stomp with a foot should be all it takes to break the top third of the lid off the coffin. Set broken part of lid aside next to excavated dirt.

Now get the body out.

If you or your client doesn’t care about a damaged jaw and palette at the roof the mouth, use the cant hook. If the anatomist wants a skull in more pristine condition, use the sling and the rope.

Option one (fastest): Standing at the head of the grave, insert sharp end of the cant hook under jaw of corpse. Pull up, lifting the body out of the coffin.

Option two (best quality): Place one end of sling between the arm and the thorax of the corpse at the armpit. Reach around the corpse’s back and grab the end of the sling. Thread sling between arm and thorax at the other armpit. Secure two ends of sling in front of corpse’s chest. Secure sling to rope. Stand at head of grave and pull the body out.

Place corpse on the other tarp. Strip the shroud off the corpse and toss back into the coffin.

This is the tricky part. As Dr. Frederick Waite was to observe in his monograph “Grave Robbing in New England”:

“Failure to observe this step of the technique often resulted in something from the body, its apparel, or ornaments being left near the grave and when found giving positive evidence that the grave had been disturbed.”

Carefully place broken off coffin lid back in place. Carefully shovel dirt from the first tarp back into the hole. Tamp the earth down and replace flowers, stones, etc. on top of grave in their previous location. Wrap corpse. Wrap tools in the other tarp. Carry corpse and tools to conveyance. Place wrapped corpse in conveyance, along with tools.

Make your getaway.

First Suspicions

This part of the story relies on recollections passed down by word of mouth and documented by local resident Maidee P. Polleys in a talk given to the Essex Historical Society, probably in the early 1900’s. It’s probably not completely factual but certainly atmospheric. The death of “fair and promising” Sally Andrews on Christmas Day 1817 had hit her mother, Sarah Tyler Andrews, particularly hard. It wasn’t just the exhaustion from tending a sick adult child twenty-four/seven as she agonizingly and painfully faded away. It wasn’t just the grief over the loss. It was repeated nightmares (4) in the opening months of 1818, nightmares in which she stood by her daughter’s grave and knew — just knew — that the coffin was empty. She visited the graveyard, now snow-blanketed, the slate headstones with their winged skulls, or urns and willows poking upward askew out of the frozen precipitation, but saw nothing other than stones, snow and bare trees. She told her husband about her nightmares and dread. She told her friends. She told her neighbors.

Until one day one of those neighbors told her something back.

A “Mrs B” lived adjacent to the graveyard and one night in early January 1818 she was up late tending a sick child. Looking out the window — what that a light among the headstones? Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. But what about that muffled sound of a “heavy team” — perhaps a horse and wagon? Surely her ears can’t be playing tricks on her at the same time. Then a snowfall came, and the burial yard was silent and seemingly unmolested.

Of course, it was already “town talk” that “…the Colleges took bodies and dissected them to learn about diseases, and some doctors got good prices for furnishing material for those dissecting rooms.” More and more villagers became concerned. But the air was cold, the snow deep and the ground frozen so no investigation could be done until the spring when the snow melted. (5)

The snow melted. An alert villager took a look in the yard. There on the ground between the graves was something that has never been exactly defined but has been described as either a length of ribbon, a comb or a hair ornament of peculiar design. Whatever it was, it was beautiful and memorable.

And people remembered that the last time they saw the ornament it was nestled in Sally Andrew’s hair as she laid cold in her coffin, just before the lid was closed and the dirt thrown in the grave.

The Investigation

On the morning of Friday, April 17, 1818, a group of villagers, including the pastor Reverend Crowell, the sexton, the grave digger and Sally Andrew’s parents Jacob and Sarah, arrived at the graveyard with shovels and picks and their suspicions to get to the proverbial bottom of the matter. They exhumed Sally Andrew’s coffin. The coffin was empty.

Horrified, the assembled begin digging at the gravesite of the next most recent deceased. They too find that coffin empty. The grim labor must have gone on for some time, for grave after grave was exhumed and the contents checked. Eight graves were without their occupants. (6)

That night, the outraged citizens gathered in an impromptu town meeting to discuss the desecration. The villagers appoint William Andrews, Thomas Choate and Nathan Burnham to head a committee to investigate the matter and pledge a $500 reward (about $10,000 in today’s money) to “whoever will give any information of the atrocious villainy, so as to detect and to bring to justice, either the traders of the abominable traffic, or their inhumane employers.” On April 25th, the local broadsheets ran advertisements of the reward.

As a protest and a reminder of this terrible crime, eight empty coffins were left standing open and empty by the burial yard for passersby to view.

The Missing

Who were the unfortunate deceased whose bodies were snatched?

Samuel Burnham

Died March 5th, 1818, age 26. Samuel was the most recent death.

Mary Millet

Died March 4, 1818, age 35

Sally Andrews

Died of consumption on December 25, 1817, age 26. Sally was one of Dr. Sewall’s patients.

William Burnham

Died of consumption & old age on December 23, 1817, age 79

Elisha Story

Died October 21, 1817, age 65 of lethargy. Mr. Story has also been under Dr. Sewall’s care; his estate had recently settled the doctor’s bill of $11.62.

Isaac Allen

Son of Joseph Allen; died Oct 16, 1817, of an abscess at age ten

Phillip Harlow

Son of John Harlow; died Oct 11, 1817, of a nervous fever at age ten

Caesar (aka Cesar) Conway

Died in July 1811 of consumption, age 70. Caesar was an enslaved Black man owned by Francis Choate, Esquire, in 1765. Caesar was emancipated upon the death of his owner in 1775 with the stipulation that he not become a financial burden to the Choate family. It is unknown what he did for an occupation or exactly when his body was “resurrected.”

What is interesting about this list is that seven out of the eight were interred — and exhumed — within the most recent six-month span.

Busted!

Awkward run-ins at the Dump

It didn’t exactly take the dexterous mental exertions of a Sherlock Homes to cast suspicion on Dr. Sewall. The good doctor was THE doctor in town and had ministered to several of the deceased. He taught anatomy to medical students as a sideline. The Choate House where he and his wife lived was roughly less than five hundred feet northeast of the burial ground, with nothing but a shallow creek and a grove of willow trees in between. And why did the good Doctor build that shack in the grove of willow trees anyway?

The morbid details have been lost to history but suffice to say that the committee made of the search of the premises, and “identifiable parts” of three corpses, including Sally Andrews and William Burnham, were found. According to New England grave robbing historian Dr. Frederick Waite, Dr. Sewall was literally “caught red-handed” with the parts while giving a lecture to anatomy students.

Dr. Sewall was arrested. Dr. Waite dryly noted that it was “two steps of faulty technique” — the unshielded lamp in January 1818 and the dropping of the hair ornament — that led to his discovery and arrest.

It was a professional and personal disaster, not just for him but for the entire Choate family. In particular, the Reverend Crowell of Chebacco and Reverend Thurston of Manchester were in a word, livid and eager to see the Doctor punished to the fullest extent of the law. One can only imagine the awkward conversations Dr. Sewall had with former friends and no doubt with family members as well. However, Dr. Reuben D Mussey of Hannover, New Hampshire wrote to Sewall’s mother-in-law to assure her that the Choate family still had friends.

Maybe elsewhere, just not in Chebacco.

Friends in High Places: The Devilish Dr. and Daniel Webster

In desperate need of a competent attorney, Dr. Sewall hired one of the best American legal minds of his — or frankly any — era. Daniel Webster, formerly the New Hampshire member of the U.S. House of Representatives and currently in private practice, became Sewall’s counsel with the payment of a pricy $20 retainer. It’s not clear how Sewall managed to secure Daniel Webster — there may have been some distant familial connection between the two via the William Sewall or John Ordway Webster lines to facilitate the introduction — but the connection was successfully made.

The Trial

The legal mechanizations again Sewall began quickly, as the doctor had the unfortunate luck to be arrested just before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was scheduled to appear on circuit at the Ipswich Courthouse on April 28th.

On that date a grand jury produced one inditement against the doctor for “receiving a human body.” The next day, the Justices summoned mother-in-law Miriam and brothers-in-law David and Washington Choate to give statements. Ten other Chebacco residents were called in to testify. Clearly there was enough testimony and evidence to pursue a case, for on May 2, Sherriff Michael Brown notified Dr. Sewall to appear before the Supreme Court in November to stand trial.

On June 23, Second Parish Reverend Robert Crowell led a solemn reinternment ceremony for the victims and delivered a lengthy sermon that was published by Andover printers Flagg and Gould. The parish sexton and assistants reburied eight empty coffins as a sign of respect in a common grave at the front of the burial yard.

The sermon itself was a verbose jeremiad outlining all the Biblical and theological arguments against body snatching which could be accurately summed up as “an indignity towards the dead and a terror to and punishment of the living,” especially body-snatching for money, which was “an outrage upon decency and humanity.”

It is unknown but highly unlikely that Dr Sewall or any of his relatives attended the event.

On November 3rd, Dr. Sewall and Daniel Webster arrived at the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem for the trial Massachusetts vs Sewall. Solicitor-General Daniel Davis brought multiple counts against the doctor. The specifics are unclear — Defense Attorney Webster was able to get the original April inditement dropped, either because the charge itself didn’t mention a specific decedent or was otherwise “inaccurately drawn,” although it’s unclear if that phrase is referring to the format of the prose or the impreciseness of a sketch of a lump of flesh.

Solicitor-General Davis produced two additional accounts, one for Sally Andrews and the other for William Burnham — both basically identically worded that Sewall did “receive, conceal and dispose” the remains of a corpse. Webster charged Sewall another $100 for his services, which is about $1,683.59 in today’s money. It was a pricey sum for Sewall at the time but doesn’t sound like much now. Daniel Webster was either an incredible bargain as legal counsel or American lawyers in the intervening centuries have figured out that the market will bear exponential increases in hourly rates.

Then the legal proceedings soon slowed, no doubt resulting in more pain and expense for Dr. Sewall. The justices decided to postpone the trial until the following April, and then postponed it again until November 1819. Despite’s Webster’s pleas for leniency on behalf of his client, a jury of his peers found Sewall guilty of two counts of knowingly and willfully receiving, concealing, and disposing of the bodies of Sally Andrews and William Burnham. Dr. Sewall was fined $800 — $400 for each corpse — and ordered to leave the Commonwealth. In January 1820 the Court degreed that $250 of the fine to be paid to Attorney William Andrews Jr and others for prosecuting the doctor.

The most famous Massachusetts body-snatching trial was finally over.

Sewall Skips Town

Proof that there are second acts in American Life

For Dr. Sewall, there were a few bright spots in what was otherwise a sordid, expensive, and frankly catastrophic turn of events between 1818 and 1820. First was the birth of his son Thomas, born the same day as his first criminal complaint hearing at the Essex County Courthouse in Ipswich. Second was the fact that despite the scandal and moral censure, his wife Mary Choate Sewall, and at least some members of his family such as Rufus Choate, stuck with him. The third was a deepening friendship between a client and his attorney, Daniel Webster.

It was Webster who apparently suggested to Sewall that he relocate his family to Washington D.C. and for a fresh start. Sewall agreed and made the move, but spent the years 1820–22 settling old scores, bringing lawsuits against no less than nine of his former Chebacco patients, including Sally Andrew’s older brother Ebenezer, for unpaid bills. Amazingly enough, the court awarded Dr. Sewall over $200 in damages, although it is not certain if any of his former clients ever paid up.

Daniel Webster went to some effort to introduce the doctor to Washington society, and the networking efforts, combined with Sewall’s talent and drive, paid off. In 1821 or 1825 (sources vary) Dr. Sewall became one of the founders of the medical school at Columbian College, now a part of George Washington University. He became a professor of — what else? — anatomy, eventually becoming the chair of the department. He maintained a close relationship with Daniel Webster, whose son Fletcher even stayed with the Sewall’s in 1826.

He became a prominent local physician and temperance activist, producing a series of eight anatomical lithographs of “alcohol diseased stomachs.” Hundreds of thousands of copies of the set were printed and distributed to prisons, hospitals, schools, and poorhouses across the United States. New York even sent the folio to each household in the state!

Sewall gave the commencement speech to the Columbian College Medical School’s Class of 1827 on the importance of good moral conduct. In 1828 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and became a professor of religion. He actively promoted the political career of his brother-in-law, Rufus Choate, and became a personal physician to three U.S. Presidents. He died in 1845 of tuberculosis at age 59.

A couple of loose ends

As if dealing with a noxious body snatching case wasn’t enough, all of this Sewall drama is occurring at the same time when the Chebacco residents were officially petitioning the Mass Legislature to become a town. Despite the morbid distraction, the residents prevailed, and Massachusetts declared the formation of the Town of Essex on February 15, 1819.

There are a couple of aspects to the story of the Body Snatcher of Chebacco Parish that are at best difficult to answer and possibly will never have an answer:

Was the Dr’s wife Mary Choate Sewall related to Thomas Choate, one of the members of the body-snatching investigation committee?

Probably (this was a small town, after all) but the exact familial connection, while probable, is unclear.

Who got the $500 reward put up by the Chebacco residents?

There is no record if the bounty was ever paid out or who received it, if anyone.

Did Sewall have any accomplices?

We don’t know. He theoretically could have taken the bodies himself (he lived next door, after all) but even with such proximity, it still would have been logistically difficult. Perhaps one or more of his students helped him. Perhaps there was a “code of silence” among Resurrection Men.

Did Sewall sell any bodies?

We don’t know. No charges were brought up as such and there is no evident that he was motivated by or materially benefited from his body snatching. It is possible, however, that if Sewall didn’t use all eight bodies for his own practice, he could have sold them to other doctors or to Harvard Medical School.

Was Dr. Sewall a member of the Spunker’s Club?

While Sewall attended Harvard Medical School, no evidence has surfaced that he was involved in the Club. Given his interest in anatomy, it is likely that he at the very least knew about it or knew fellow students in it.

What happened to the found remains?

We don’t know what happened to the recovered bits of Sally Andrews and William Burnham. Perhaps they were buried in the common grave that is reputedly below the Hearse House in the burial yard.

What did Dr. Sewall’s wife think of all this?

We don’t know what Mary though of her husband’s proclivity to dissect the remains of his patients. We do know she stuck by him through the trial and relocated with him to D.C. They had a long marriage, and in the absence of contrary evidence, can presume it was a happy or at least reasonably amicable one. At least one of the victims — Sally Andrews — was close enough to Mary’s age that they could have been friends. At the very least, being children in a town of less than two thousand people, they probably knew each other.

Do we know where the snatched bodies were buried?

We do not. There are several “blank spots” in what is officially known as the “GR1 Old Burial Ground” on Main Street, but the historical records only cover the locations of the almost four-hundred headstones that survive. The blank spots may be the where the snatched bodies briefly rested or are spots where the original markers were wood that rotted away over time. An estimated two-thousand bodies were buried in the yard between 1680 and 1860.

An interesting postscript

In 1823, a man named Tyler Parson published a book of trial testimony titled Truth Espoused. It’s a difficult read — imagine a cross between a James Fenimore Cooper novel in affidavit format and a multi-post Twitter rant. The work concerns a scandal that had recently occurred between the townsfolks of Manchester, the town immediately south of Essex, and their pastor, a Reverend James Thurston, originally from Exeter, NH.

Historian Darius Francis Lamson has a brief sanitized reference to this scandal in his 1895 work on the history of the town:

“…The beginning of Mr. Thurston’s pastorate seemed bright with promise; the large additions to the church and the interest in the new department of the Sunday school augured well for the future. But the day that dawned so bright, was soon clouded, and Mr. Thurston’s pastorate was on the whole a stormy one. An unfortunate cause of mis- understanding arose, criminations and recriminations followed, and witnessing angels sorrowfully turned their faces aside. The contention resulted in the dismissal of Mr. Thurston, July 9, 1819.”

Fortunately, Truth Espoused provides more color and salacious detail to these misunderstandings and criminations. In 1809, the town of Manchester hired Reverend Thurston, and things were copasetic between the pastor and his flock for about a decade.

Then everything went to hell.

The congregation brought up multiple charges against the Reverend, who apparently had been arguing about his salary and slandering the congregants — and that was just for starters. Thurston’s conduct “had been as such as to destroy his usefulness as a teacher of piety, morality and virtue.” He allegedly stole a bunch of shingles from the Manchester school house “an ungentlemanlike and unchristianlike manner.” (As opposed to stealing them in a gentlemanly and Christian-like manner?) When the allegations surfaced, Thurston tried to call a special Town Meeting and appoint a hand-picked committee to evade the charges — but that’s not the worst part.

The third charge had to do with his attempts at hiring a doctor. As one of the church elders acerbically noted, “we did not employ him to invite physicians here to town”. Manchester’s Reverend Thurston, along with Essex’s Reverend Crowell, had been one of the most vociferous critics of our Chebacco body-snatcher Dr Sewall. But it turns out that that back in 1815, Thurston had attempted to convince a Dr. John Dewey of Hanover, New Hampshire (site of Dartmouth Medical College) to relocate to Manchester, stating that the town “was a fine place for private dissection as there was not the least difficult for obtaining subjects there.”

Dr. Dewey mentions this rather unorthodox sales pitch to his colleague, a Dr. Reuben Mussey, who happens to be a friend of Dr. Sewall. In a Nov 18th, 1818 letter, Dr. Mussey wrote

: “…it did strike me with surprise, as it did Dr. Dewey, that a gentleman should offer to one physician the facility of obtaining and dissecting dead bodies, as an inducement for him to settle in his parish, and persecute another physician with unremitted zeal for the same thing.”

Long story short, word gets back to the Manchester elders, who fire Reverend Thurston. Thurston in response sues one of the Manchester church elders, Tyler Parsons. Parsons in turn, writes a tell all book. That’s Christian agape, American style!

One thing’s for certain though. Manchester may want to bring a DPW crew and couple of spades to its own Old North Burial Ground.

Just to double-check.

Footnotes

1. A disquieting corner case is the question of the status of slave remains. If a slave is property, and the slave is buried, is its body still the property of the owner? There is a long and terrible history of the mistreatment of Black bodies — for dissection and other indignities — that stretched from the 17th well into the 20th Century.

2. The graves in the Old Burial Ground in Essex face SSW, towards the main road, perhaps indicating that for the Chebacco residents in a choice between practicality and eschatology, practicality won the day.

3. The Spunker Club was secret, or at least unofficial, and seems to have existed in some format until the first decades of the 19th century.

4. Note that Maidee Polley’s “Robbed in the Graveyard” account is imprecise on who exactly had the premonition dream, stating it was Mrs. Andrews in one part of the text and a Mrs. Giddings in another.

5. Despite the myth that the cold and snow prevented the graves from being exhumed until April, contemporary accounts from the winter of 1817–18 describe the weather as unusually mild — which of course created ideal conditions for body-snatching. At least two of the victims — Samuel Burnham and Mary Millet, had died just weeks before their coffins were exhumed.

6. Maidee Polley also states in her account that 20–30 graves were found empty; however, this may be the number of graves that were exhumed. All other accounts of the event, including the reward notice, list the number of bodies snatched as eight.

Sources

Books & Articles

History of Essex County Mass

“A most daring and sacrilegious robbery” The extraordinary story of body snatching at Chebacco Parish in Ipswich, Massachusetts by Christopher Benedetto. New England Ancestors, 2005 (Spring), 6 (2), p. 31.

The private correspondence of Daniel Webster, col 1

Webster, Daniel, 1782–1852., Webster, Fletcher, ed. 1813–1862., Sanborn, Edwin David, 1808–1885.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ABP5165.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext

History of the town of Manchester, Essex County, Massachusetts, 1645–1895

by Lamson, D. F. (Darius Francis)

https://books.google.com/books?id=LCoWAAAAYAAJ

Websites

From Grave Robbing to Gifting: Cadaver Supply in the United States — Aaron D. Tward, MA; Hugh A. Patterson, PhD March 6, 2002

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845037

Grave Robbing in New England By Dr. Frederick C. Waite, * Professor Emeritus of Embryology and Histology, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194496/pdf/mlab00261-0002.pdf

The Body Snatcher of Chebacco Parish — The New England Historical Society

https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-body-snatcher-of-chebacco-parish/

The Body Snatcher of Chebacco Parish — Historic Ipswich

https://historicipswich.org/2019/02/09/the-body-snatcher-of-chebacco-parish/

Biography of Dr. Thomas Sewall — Alcohol Problems and Solutions

https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/Controversies/Biography-Dr-Thomas-Sewall.html

“Robbed the Graveyard” — transcription of nine page handwritten manuscript by Maidee P. Polleys

http://sites.rootsweb.com/~macessex/cemetery/ref3.html

Tax rolls for the town of Essex

http://sites.rootsweb.com/~macessex/tax/e10.txt

http://sites.rootsweb.com/~macessex/tax/e16.txt

Three-page letter from Thomas Sewall in Washington to Mills Olcott in Hanover, New Hampshire, telling him about the advisability of Rufus Choate’s entering Webster’s office.

https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/resources/9499

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/44077137/thomas-sewall