The observation tower at Rocky Point stood like a beacon, high above the rides, concessions and acres of amusements. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.
The following day, nearly 250 members of the florists club arrived at the park. The dinner that had been arranged for them was fully prepared, and it was expected the group would head directly to the Shore Dinner Hall. However, the mass went in the opposite direction and headed for the Mansion House, where the alcohol was being stored. As members crossed the piazza that stretched across the front of the building, it collapsed, and one member, Timothy Kelly, fell to the ground, fifteen feet below.
Charging the park owners with negligence and seeking restitution for the personal injuries Kelly received, his lawyer, John Burke, argued that his client had suffered due to an insecure, unsafe and defective structure, made so by a lack of necessary support underneath the hotel’s piazza.
The defendants argued that the building was not a hotel and that the piazza was never constructed or intended to hold such a large number of people at one time. The building was, in fact, an office building that housed park superintendent John Brannegan and his family and several seasonal employees, according to the defendants. They explained that they usually made rooms in the building available to members of organizations that were visiting the park, where they could retreat to count tickets, write up accounts and complete any other business they needed to tend to concerning their visit. The room that had been assigned to the florists club was not a hotel room at all, they went on, but a nine- by thirteen-foot former storage room.
Rocky Point Park offered hours of fun and scenic delights. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.
Regardless of the defendants’ explanations and arguments, Timothy Kelly won his case.
Former New York theatrical agent Randall Harrington decided to lease the park, despite the damage contained within, in 1888. After investing much time and money into building the grounds back up to their former glory, Harrington began advertising Rocky Point as “the people’s popular place.”
He added a large outdoor refreshment garden, which could seat 1,000, to the rear of the park and renovated part of the vegetable garden to be used as a ball field. The grandstand there, which could seat 10,000 people, transformed that area of the resort into a gathering spot for throngs of baseball fans. The largest attendance ever recorded at the ball field was 14,060 people.
The Ferris wheel at Rocky Point Park lifted visitors high enough to look out over Narragansett Bay. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.
There was always an uproar among certain members of the local population concerning the highly popular Sunday baseball games held at Rocky Point. Many thought that the official “day of rest” should be honored as such and not tainted by games of sport. But many more felt that, since most other parks were staunch about refraining from baseball on Sundays, Rocky Point was the place to be.
Other popular attractions in the park were the camera obscura, an optical device that projected images on a screen, and a giant waterslide, added in 1892, called the Big Toboggan. Also added was a sixty-foot wooden Ferris wheel designed by Charles Looff, one of the world’s most famous builders of carousels. The sixteen chariots each held two passengers, giving them an unforgettable view of the bay from the top of the ride.
There was barely enough time in one day for families to take in all that Rocky Point had to offer, and few left without stopping at the photo studio in the midway to have their portraits taken by photographer Edward Tatro, the former operator of the Big Toboggan ride. Patrons could choose an artificial backdrop from the entertaining selections offered.
Rocky Point opened each year on the first week of July and stayed open until the first week of September. It was ready to welcome guests for business each morning at half past eight and closed its gates at six o’clock at night. Several hours were then spent cleaning the grounds. Alcoholic beverages were still banned on the property, and Sundays found the park closed except for baseball.
Rocky Point’s drinking fountain. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.
Many different groups and organizations around New England and beyond held fundraisers, parties and annual outings at Rocky Point. Such was the case when the Fall River Police Department scheduled a fun vacation day for its officers on August 4, 1892. While the law enforcers were enjoying a carefree time, Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were being savagely murdered back in Fall River. Exactly one year and two weeks later, it was Maggie Sheffield being bludgeoned, right there on the grounds of the park.
3
THE FAMILY
A Wife Immaculate
Frank Howard Sheffield was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, on August 9, 1850. His mother, Charlotte Delana (Howard), was a homemaker, and his father, John Franklin Sheffield, was a Methodist preacher.
The family moved around quite often, answering the call of Reverend Sheffield’s chosen career wherever it came from. In 1860, the family resided in Enfield, Connecticut. Ten years later, they were in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. By 1880, they had moved to Cumberland, Rhode Island.
Frank grew up listening intently to his father’s powerful sermons about the fundamental aspects of being graceful in the eyes of God. The Methodists did not believe that one was saved by merely doing good deeds but by the strongest faith in the Lord. Redemption would come, preached John, and all who believed in the Lord would be awarded it, even if they had not been able to shun evil or avoid committing wicked deeds while here on earth.
For a time, Frank himself considered going into the ministry and even began studies in the field. However, he changed his mind before becoming ordained and never revisited that righteous path again.
Ironically, considering the shocking events that would come to pass in the future, Frank and his siblings, Mary Charlotte and Charles, would spend time living in a house that neighbored the East Greenwich County jail. In that town, their father served as pastor of the East Greenwich Methodist Church.
Frank’s mother died on February 2, 1875, at the age of fifty-two, and his father later married Mary Segur. All three of John and Charlotte’s children grew up to become schoolteachers, and in the mid-1870s, Frank took on the position of principal at East Greenwich School.
On December 15, 1876, Frank married Miss Mary Ann Hill of Mystic, Connecticut. Mary’s father, Mason Crary Hill, was a master shipbuilder, well known for designing and building the clipper ship Alboni. Launched in 1852, the vessel was named after the Italian opera singer Marietta Alboni and carried a figurehead of a dove with an orange branch in its beak. Weighing 917 tons and measuring 156 feet in length, the ship was originally commissioned for trade voyages to Cape Horn. Its worth at the time was over $50,000.
Frank’s new father-in-law was well respected and much acquainted with a life of prestige and wealth. However, he had also known the pain of loss and great personal tragedy. His first wife, Mary Ann Williams, was accidentally drowned at the age of twenty-eight when a boat on which she was a passenger overturned on the Mystic River on the Fourth of July 1853. His love for her was evident by the mournful etching he had placed on her gravestone, which reads, “A wife immaculate.”
Mason next married Miss Margaret Wheeler. The couple had many children together, including Mary Ann, who was named after her father’s first wife.
After Frank and Mary Ann were united in marriage, they took up residence next door to her parents on Greenmanville Avenue in Mystic. On January 11, 1880, Mary Ann gave birth to a dark-haired, blue-eyed baby boy, whom they named Mason Howard Sheffield.
Later that year, the couple moved to Pawcatuck, Connecticut, a small village in the town of Stonington, where they rented a segment of the three-family tenement house at 24 Liberty Street. No immediate relation, the owner of the tenement house was sixty-five-year-old patternmaker and former ship’s carpenter Amos Thompson Sheffield, who resided with his own family at
27 Liberty Street.
Frank obtained a job as principal of the recently built Palmer Street School in Pawcatuck. While employed in that position, he was engaged in a freak accident that resulted in an apparent long-standing injury. As he was in the process of ringing the large school bell, the bell somehow maneuvered itself to strike Frank violently on the head. According to all who knew him, this accident caused Frank to have severe headaches on a regular basis for years afterward.
Mary Ann gave birth to the couple’s second child, Maggie Segur Sheffield—the middle name perhaps honoring Frank’s stepmother—on January 31, 1888. However, her daughter’s entrance into the world would bring about her own demise. On February 7, 1888, just one week after Maggie’s birth, Mary Ann died at the age of thirty-three. On the day prior to her death, it became clear to those around her that Mary Ann was not recovering from the birth very well. The painful effects of peritonitis, a condition caused by a hemorrhage of the membranes in the lining of the pelvic wall following the baby’s arrival, were setting in.
The birth certificate of Maggie Segur Sheffield. Courtesy of Stonington Town Hall.
The inflammation in Mary Ann’s abdomen became so severe that it caused her lungs to swell. Already in immense pain, she struggled to breathe, which was at first difficult and then impossible. Frank lost the wife he loved, and Maggie lost the mother she would never know. Mary Ann was buried in the large Elm Grove Cemetery, located right down the road from her parents’ house.
Out of nowhere, Frank was faced with a future he had never even imagined. Suddenly, he had become a widower with two small children to raise on his own. He decided to let Mary Ann’s parents take Mason into their care. As for his newborn daughter, she would go to live with Frank’s parents at their own Danielsonville, Connecticut home. He would remain, alone, at the 24 Liberty Street house.
The death certificate of Mary Ann Sheffield, who died shortly after giving birth to Maggie. Courtesy of Stonington Town Hall.
The grave of Mary Ann Sheffield at Elm Gove Cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut. Photograph by Kelly Sullivan Pezza.
The year after Mary Ann’s death, Frank resigned from his position at Palmer Street School, believing that making some changes in his life would do him good. He took a new position as principal of Liberty Street School, which stood very near to his residence. However, later that year, he contracted erysipelas, a bacterial infection, and began to feel unwell on a regular basis. His employment was terminated in 1890. By that time, he was married again.
On November 27, 1889, Frank had exchanged vows with Nancy Armeda Sheffield, the thirty-seven-year-old daughter of his former landlord, who had passed away eleven months earlier. A professional dressmaker by trade, Nancy knew the mournful feeling of loss that her new husband surely carried with him. She had already lost four sisters, as well as her mother and now her father.
Frank moved into the 27 Liberty Street house with Nancy and secured a position as a clerk in the freight department of the New York, Providence & Boston Railroad’s depot in Westerly, Rhode Island. However, his poor health continued to plague him, and he was soon let go from his employment there due to the fact that he could not perform his job efficiently.
On October 14, 1890, Nancy gave birth to the couple’s first child, whom they named Sarah Elizabeth Sheffield. Frank began working for W.D. Sheffield of New Haven as a rent collector, and it might have appeared to some that he had started life anew. But for Frank, it was not that easy to push the past behind and look toward an untainted future.
Those who knew him best could clearly see that something was wrong. All that had been instilled in him by his religious father seemed to have drained away. He wanted nothing to do with religion any longer and refused to even speak about Christianity with anyone unless it was in the form of an argument in which he could try to fray the beliefs of those who were followers.
Frank showed a growing interest in agnosticism and spent time studying the science of its ambivalence. His father was shocked and hurt by the transition his son had made and later, after Maggie’s murder, claimed that because Frank had absolutely no reason to commit such a crime, the killing had obviously been the work of a demon.
Despite his ongoing dismissal of deep religious beliefs, Frank would appear at a Methodist meeting a few weeks before that fateful day at Rocky Point and surprise everyone by standing up and asking for their prayers.
What was truly going through Frank Sheffield’s mind in those years that followed his wife’s untimely death no one close to him seemed to know. Perhaps he needed an explanation that Christian beliefs did not provide or a soft place to fall when such an answer wasn’t available. Perhaps he needed to blame someone for his loss. The small child who would have her young life bludgeoned out of her as a result of Frank’s despair had been the ultimate cause of Mary Ann’s death. Maggie’s existence had replaced that of her mother. Frank possibly wrestled with that thought amid the confusion in his mind.
Nancy may or may not have realized, or accepted, that something was dreadfully wrong with the man she had married. Regardless, on August 2, 1892, she went on to give birth to the second of their children, a son whom they named Amos Thompson Sheffield, after Nancy’s father. However, little Amos would never get the opportunity to know his father. The boy had just celebrated his first birthday when Frank committed the unspeakable act that would cause him to be locked away for life.
4
THE ABDUCTION
Why Are You Looking at Me Like That?
On the pleasant Sunday morning of August 27, 1893, Frank Sheffield rose from his bed at seven o’clock. After getting changed into his daytime clothes, he informed Nancy that he needed to make some purchases and was going to take a walk down to Richmond Brother’s Grocery, which was located on West Broad Street, not far from their home. Nancy thought whatever errand he was on could wait until later. She had already begun cooking their morning meal. “Breakfast will be ready soon,” she told him. But Frank ignored the announcement and continued on with the plans he had made.
After walking out the door, he started down the road. Wherever he went and whatever he did immediately after that no one knew. But he failed to return home when he was done, leaving a cold breakfast and a wondering wife.
Eventually, he made his way to the train depot on Railroad Avenue, where he had been working several months earlier. Approaching the ticket booth, he handed over the fare for transportation to Providence. A man who was standing nearby recognized him.
“Where are you going?” the man asked.
“I’m going to Attleboro to get my child,” Frank replied. Despite the fact that his wife was waiting at home with no idea where he was, when the 8:18 a.m. train for the city left, Frank was on it.
Several hours later, when he still hadn’t returned home, Nancy became worried and went out looking for him. She had a good reason to be concerned. Frank had been seeing a doctor who had informed Nancy that her husband was not well and that she should take care not to let him wander off alone.
With growing concern, Nancy enlisted the help of Frank’s friend twenty-seven-year-old Dennison Hinckley of Westerly. Hinckley was an undertaker and part owner of Hinckley & Mitchell, a furniture store and undertaking business located at 44 High Street in Westerly. He and Frank were both members of Pawcatuck Lodge #90 and had been good friends for quite some time.
Nancy also decided it was a useful idea to send telegrams to Frank’s family members, including his sister in Attleboro, to determine whether they had seen him or had any idea of his whereabouts. Unfortunately, the message was not received by Mary Charlotte until the following day.
Frank’s sister and her husband, Methodist minister George Edgar Brightman, had been entertaining house guests for the past ten days. Her father and stepmother had come to stay with them for a short time, and since Maggie lived with her paternal grandfather, she was staying there also.
Mary Charlotte was very surprised to see Frank show up on her doorstep at t
welve o’clock that afternoon. When she questioned him about his visit, he informed her that he was there to pick up Maggie and take her with him.
Greatly alarmed by his ruffled appearance and fully aware of his recent mental deterioration, Mary Charlotte urged Frank to lie down and take a nap. She explained to him that he would feel much better after he had some sleep. Frank showed little patience with the delay in obtaining custody of his daughter and quickly declined her offer. He acted much too eager, much too desperate, to collect the child and be on his way.
George Brightman returned home from preaching the morning service at the Methodist church to witness his disheveled brother-in-law being adamant about leaving with Maggie. The fidgety way he behaved while arguing with George and his wife, coupled with the strange way he continuously stared at Maggie, made them very uncomfortable.
Even the little girl could see that something was very wrong with her father and the way his eyes were set upon her. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she questioned him.
George desperately tried to reason with Frank. He attempted to convince him that it truly was in his best interest to go in another room and try to get some rest before starting back out for home. Whether he was mentally or physically exhausted by that time, Frank finally relented and went into one of the other rooms, where he slept for several hours.
George immediately sent a telegram to Nancy in order to let her know that Frank was there and safe for the time being. But that message was also delayed until the following day.
When Frank finally awoke later that evening, he joined the rest of the family at the dinner table and partook of a fairly large meal. He was persuaded to remain there at the Brightman house for the rest of the night, as they all believed that Nancy knew of his location via their telegram.
The next morning, when Mary Charlotte received the belated message Nancy had sent her asking if she knew where Frank was, she was wrought with confusion. She took her father and stepmother aside and shared the message with them, as they all tried to figure out why Nancy would send such a telegram when they had already informed her of the situation.
Murder at Rocky Point Park:: Tragedy in Rhode Island's Summer Paradise Page 3
