On June 24, 1871, retired Major General William Scott Ketchum and his close friend Eliza C. W. Chubb of the Treasury Department left Washington D.C. by train to Baltimore to pay a visit to Mrs. Elizabeth G. Wharton before she left to go on a lengthy tour of Europe later that summer. Mrs. Wharton was the widowed wife of Henry W. Wharton, a fellow army officer of the 6th Infantry and good friend of General Ketchum's from his days on frontier duty in Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mrs. Chubb had also known Mrs. Wharton for more than twenty years at this time.
That evening at the residence of Mrs. Wharton, The General, Mrs. Chubb, and another guest by the name of Mr. Van Ness were offered a cool glass of milk punch as a refreshment after dinner. Soon, after consuming the drink, the General became extremely ill and retired to his upstairs room prepared by Mrs. Wharton. After three days of agonizing pain, vomiting, and delirium, General Ketchum had died. It must be noted that Mr. Van Ness also had mysteriously fallen ill, but not to the level of severity as had General Ketchum.
Mrs. Wharton was charged with the poisoning death of William Scott Ketchum and was put on trial later that year. It is speculated that Ketchum had caught wind of Mrs. Wharton's plan to tour Europe and wanted to collect a debt of $2,600 that she owed him. If she had money for an extravagant vacation, it would stand to reason that she should be able to pay back the money she owed General Ketchum.
During the trial which devolved into a competition of expert medical witnesses on both the prosecution's and defense's side, the General's son, Charles Leavenworth Ketchum was asked to testify about his knowledge of money owed to his father by Mrs. Wharton. He produced the pocket diary used by his father to track monetary income and expenditures that he kept in his pocket. It was a pocket diary published in 1863 that he had not used with great regularity until it would appear in 1870 by the entries written within. The testimony was called by the prosecution since Mrs. Wharton had been accused of going through General Ketchum's overcoat and vest as he lay ill in her house and removed and destroyed the signed note that stated she owed him for the loan of $2,600. She overlooked the pocket diary it would seem.
Below is a page from the pocket diary of General Ketchum that Charles Leavenworth Ketchum used in his testimony for the prosecution against Mrs. Wharton. On the right hand page is seen interest owed by Charles Leavenworth Ketchum for $69.00 and "E.G.W." (Elizabeth G. Wharton) for $130.00. Doing some simple arithmetic, you can see that $130.00 would be 5% interest on the $2,600 that he loaned to Mrs. Wharton. She paid only the interest while never paying back the principal amount of the loan.
It was in a way rather exciting for me to leaf through this diary of William Scott Ketchum's which had been kept in a box for the past 145 years knowing that with the exception of only my 2x great grandfather, Charles Leavenworth Ketchum, and possibly one or two other family members, none in my family were ever aware of its relevance to his death and the trial of Mrs. Wharton. It will remain a family treasure for years to come.
I will cover the trial of Mrs. Wharton in the future.
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| General Ketchum's Pocket Diary |
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| Pages from inside William Scott Ketchum's Pocket Diary from January of 1871. |
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| Civil War era photo of General William Scott Ketchum |
