When this Trial terminated, I returned to my home in Manteno, where five
days previous I had bestowed the parting kiss upon my three youngest
children, little thinking it would be the last embrace I should be allowed
to bestow upon these dear objects of my warmest affections. But alas! so
it proved to be. Mr. Packard had fled with them to Massachusetts, leaving
me in the court room a childless widow. He could not but see that the tide
of popular indignation was concentrating against him, as the revelations
of the court ventilated the dreadful facts of this conspiracy, and he
"fled his country," a fugitive from justice. He, however, left a letter
for me which was handed me before I left the Court-house, wherein he
stated that he had moved to Massachusetts, and extended to me an
invitation to follow him, with the promise that he would provide me a
suitable home. But I did not feel much like trusting either to his
humanity or judgment in providing me another home. Indeed, I did not think
it safe to follow him, knowing that Massachusetts' laws gave him the
absolute custody of my person as well as Illinois' laws. He went to South
Deerfield, Massachusetts, and sought shelter for himself and his children
in the family of his sister, Mrs. Severance, one of his co-conspirators.
Here he found willing ears to credit his tale of abuses he had suffered in
this interference of his rights to do as he pleased with his lawful
wife--and in representing the trial as a "mock trial," an illegal
interference with his rights as head of his own household, and a "mob
triumph,"--and in short, he was an innocent victim of a persecution
against his legally constituted rights as a husband, to protect his wife
in the way his own feelings of bigotry and intolerance should dictate!
This was the region of his nativity and former pastorate, which he had
left about eleven years previously, with an unblemished external
character, and sharing, to an uncommon degree, the entire confidence of
the public as a Christian man and a minister. Nothing had occurred, _to
their knowledge_, to disturb this confidence in his present integrity as
an honest reporter, and the entire community credited his testimony as
perfectly reliable, in his entire misrepresentations of the facts in the
case, and the character of the trial. His view was the only view the
community were allowed to hear, so far as it was in his power to prevent
it. The press also lent him its aid, as his organ of communication. He met
also his old associates in the ministry, and by his artfully arranged web
of lies, and his cunning sophistries, he deluded them also into a belief
of his views, so that they, unanimously, gave him their certificate of
confidence and fraternal sympathy. Yea, even my own father and brothers
became victims also of his sophisms and misrepresentations, so that they
honestly believed me to be insane, and that the Westerners had really
interfered with Mr. Packard's rights and kind intents towards his wife, in
intercepting as they had, his plans to keep her incarcerated for life.
Thus this one-sided view of the facts in the case so moulded public
sentiment in this conservative part of New England, that he even obtained
a certificate from my own dear father, a retired orthodox clergyman in
Sunderland, Massachusetts, that, so far as he knew, he had treated his
daughter generally with propriety!! This certificate served as a passport
to the confidence of Sunderland people in Mr. Packard as a man and a
minister, and procured for him a call to become their minister in holy
things. He was accordingly hired, as stated supply, and paid fifteen
dollars a Sabbath for one year and a half, and was boarded by my father in
his family, part of the time, free of charge.
The condition in which Mr. Packard left me I will now give in the language
of another, by inserting here a quotation from one of the many Chicago
papers which published an account of this trial with editorial remarks
accompanying it. The following is a part of one of these Editorial
Articles, which appeared under the caption:--
"A HEARTLESS CLERGYMAN."
_Chicago, March 6, 1864._
"We recently gave an extended account of the melancholy case of Mrs.
Packard, of Manteno, Ill., and showed how she was persecuted by her
husband, Rev. Theophilus Packard, a bigoted Presbyterian minister of
Manteno. Mrs. Packard became liberal in her views, in fact, avowed
Universalist sentiments; and as her husband was unable to answer her
arguments, he thought he could silence her tongue, by calling her
_insane_, and having her incarcerated in the Insane Asylum at
Jacksonville, Illinois. He finally succeeded in finding one or two
orthodox physicians, as bigoted as himself, ready to aid him in his
nefarious work, and she was confined in the asylum, under the charge
(?) of Dr. McFarland, who kept her there three years. She at last
succeeded in having a jury trial, and was pronounced _sane_.
Previous, however, to the termination of the trial, this persecutor
of his wife, mortgaged his property, took away his children from the
mother, and left her penniless and homeless, without a cent to buy
food, or a place where to lay her head! And yet he pretended to
believe that she was _insane_! Is this the way to treat an insane
wife! Abandon her, turn her out upon the world without a morsel of
bread, and no home? Her husband calls her _insane_. Before the case
is decided by the jury, he starts for parts unknown. Was there ever
such a case of heartlessness? If Mr. Packard _believed_ his wife to
be hopelessly _insane_, why did he abandon her? Is this the way to
treat a companion afflicted with insanity? If he believed his own
story, he should, like a devoted husband, have watched over her with
tenderness, his heart full of love should have gone out towards the
poor, afflicted woman, and he should have bent over her and soothed
her, and spent the last penny he had, for her recovery! But instead
of this, he gathers in his funds, "packs up his duds," and leaves his
poor, _insane_ wife, as _he_ calls her, in the court room, without
food or shelter. He abandons her, leaving her penniless, homeless and
childless!
"Mrs. Packard is now residing with Mr. Z. Handford, of Manteno, who
writes to the Kankakee _Gazette_ as follows:
"In the first place, Mrs. Packard is now penniless. After having
aided her husband for twenty-one years, by her most indefatigable
exertions, to secure for themselves a home, with all its clustering
comforts, he, with no cause, except a difference in religious
opinions, exiled her from her home, by forcing her into Jacksonville
Insane Asylum, where he hoped to immure her for life, or until she
would abandon what _he_ calls her 'insane notions.'
"But in the overruling providence of a just God, her case has been
ventilated, at last, by a jury trial, the account of which is already
before the public.
"From the time of her banishment into exile, now more than three and
a half years, he has not allowed her the control of one dollar of
their personal property. And she has had nothing to do with their
real estate, within that time, excepting to sign one deed for the
transfer of some of their real estate in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, which
she did at her husband's earnest solicitations, and his promise to
let her have her 'defense,' long enough to copy, which document he
had robbed her of three years before, by means of Dr. McFarland as
agent. Her signature, _thus obtained_, was acknowledged as a valid
act, and the deed was presented to the purchaser as a valid
instrument, even after Mr. Packard had just before taken an _oath_
that his wife was an _insane_ woman!
"He has robbed her of all her patrimony, including not only her
furniture, but her valuable clothing also, and a note of six hundred
dollars on interest, which he gave her seven years before, as an
equivalent for this amount of patrimony which her father, Rev. Samuel
Ware, of Sunderland, Massachusetts, sent Mrs. Packard for her special
benefit, and to be used for her and her children as her own judgment
should dictate. He has taken her furniture and clothing, or the
avails of them, with him to Massachusetts, without allowing her a
single article of furniture for her own individual comfort and use.
Thus he has left her without a single penny of their common property
to procure for herself the necessaries of life.
"He has left her homeless. Before the court closed, Mr. Packard left
this scene of revelations, and mortgaged and rented their home in
Manteno, and dispossessed it by night of its furniture, so that when
the court closed, Mrs. Packard had no sort of home to return to, the
new renter having claimed possession of her home, and claiming a
legal right to all its privileges, excluding her from its use
entirely as a home, without leaving her the least legal claim to any
of the avails of the rent or sales for the supply of her present
necessities.
"Again, she is childless. Her cruel husband, not satisfied with
robbing his wife of all her rightful property, has actually
_kidnapped_ all her dear children who lived at home, taking them with
him, clandestinely, to Massachusetts, leaving her a 'childless
widow,' entirely dependent for her living, either upon her own
exertions, or the charities of the public. We will not attempt to
describe the desolation of her maternal heart, when she returned to
her deserted home, to find it despoiled of all her dearest earthly
treasures; with no sweet cherub, with its smiling, joyous face to
extend to her the happy, welcome kiss of a mother's return.
"But one short week previous, Mrs. Packard had bestowed the parting
kiss upon her three youngest children, little dreaming it would be
the last embrace the mother would ever be allowed to bestow upon her
dear offspring, in their own dear home. But now, alas! where is her
only daughter, Elizabeth, of thirteen years, and her George Hastings,
of ten years, and her darling baby, Arthur Dwight, of five years?
Gone! gone! never to return, while the mandate of their father's iron
will usurps supreme control of this household!
"Yes, the mother's home and heart are both desolate, for her
heart-treasures--her dear children--are no more to be found. At
length, rumor reaches her that her babe, Arthur, is at their brother
Dole's. The anxious mother hastens to seek for it there. But all in
vain. The family, faithful to their brother's wishes, keep the babe
carefully hid from the mother, so that she cannot get even one
glimpse of her sweet, darling boy. Her cruel husband, fearing her
attempts to secure the child might prove successful, has sent for it
to be brought to him in Massachusetts, where he now is fairly out of
the mother's reach."