Jun 9, 2019 8 min read

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Photo courtesy of Linda Stanley

This photo of Harry Eastman Lane was taken when he was 23 years old.

Photo courtesy of Linda Stanley

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This engraved illustration was published in the June 14, 1893, Washington Daily Reporter.

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On a warm Saturday night in June 1893, Harry Eastman Lane, 25, disappeared. Investigators were sure a murder had been committed, but they could not find his body. What really happened to Harry – and why – would remain a mystery… until now.

The usual crowd of young men had gathered on a sultry Saturday evening at Jim Chambers’ store and post office in the village called Pancake, just east of Washington on the National Pike. Most were headed for town, looking for liquor or card games, or to court their girlfriends. A few were there just for the jovial atmosphere, the laughter and loud talk. Some were still there at 9 o’clock when Harry Lane arrived, having a boy hold his brown mare while he went into the store. Everyone knew Harry; he was one of the crowd, or had been until he’d gotten married and settled down on the Lane family farm a couple miles farther out the pike.

Harry, 25, had an athletic build: five feet eight inches tall and weighing 165 pounds. He was wearing a black pot hat, a coat and vest and a light-colored shirt, but no tie. He chatted with his friends and then bought a handful of cigars and paid for them with a bill he peeled from a large roll. One of his friends saw him wrap the roll in brown paper and stick it back in his coat pocket.

James Birmingham talked with Harry outside the store and watched him ride away, his horse striking a gallop up the grade beyond the village.

That was the last time anyone of his friends laid eyes upon Harry Lane.

The day on which Harry Lane disappeared – June 10, 1893 – started off warm and grew hotter. The Daily Reporter noted in that afternoon’s edition that the temperature reached 89 degrees at noon. Harry had spent most of the day in Greene County selling foodstuffs and household items out of his wagon, and it was getting close to 4 o’clock before his sweating team reached the Pike from the Waynesburg road and plodded eastward, just two miles from home in South Strabane Township.

Harry was just starting to achieve some success as a huckster. It was not easy work, but far more pleasant than farm labor. And making a living in agriculture was difficult; an additional source of income was necessary for most farmers, especially in these hard times for the economy. Five weeks earlier, panic caused a stock market crash that would send the nation into a depression. But the discovery of large deposits of oil and gas had brought the beginnings of prosperity to Washington County, and Harry saw opportunity in this. He peddled produce from his parents’ farm, and he bought goods and sold them at a profit to folks on his route, saving them the inconvenience of going to town to shop.

Harry and his wife, the former Clara Berkley, lived in a small frame house on his parents’ 300-acre farm with their toddler, Grace, born on Christmas Day 1892. His workday was not yet over, however, and after supper he borrowed the horse of his farm hand, Stewart Early, and headed for town at about 6 p.m.

When he reached the place where the old Doak lane (now Zediker Station Road) met the National Pike, Harry encountered two of his friends from the neighborhood, D.T. Reynolds and George Salsberry. They would later tell investigators that Harry was in good spirits. The two were headed a little farther east on the pike to a festival and dance at Myers’ barn, a benefit for the Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church. They asked Harry to go with them but he declined, telling them he was on his way to pick up $200, arriving by express. The money was payment for sales in Pittsburgh earlier in the week.

Emma Nease told investigators she had seen Harry come into Washington at about 8 o’clock and leave shortly after that. Emma and her husband, William, knew Harry well. The couple, who lived at the corner of Maiden and Main streets above the grocery they operated, had a daughter, also named Grace, born just a few weeks after little Grace Lane.

After leaving Chambers’ store, galloping up the grade, Harry should have reached home before 10 p.m. He never got there.

A riderless horse

The farmhand Stewart Early and one of Harry’s younger brothers, Daniel, 21, had gone to the dance at Myers’ barn that evening, leaving at 11:30 p.m. Following is an excerpt from the June 12 Daily Reporter:

“Passing down the road to the Lane neighborhood, which leaves the pike between the farms of John Little and Moses Little, they were much surprised to see Harry Lane’s horse grazing by the wayside. They took the horse to the stable at Robert Lane’s (Harry’s father). It is said it had the appearance of having been hard ridden, and ’tis also said that Harry Lane was not a hard rider. Driving on down to Harry’s home they learned from his wife that he had not yet reached home. Not telling her of finding the horse, they returned to the pike and came on to town, thinking his horse might have slipped from him on the way. They were in town a few minutes about 2 a.m. Sunday, but soon returned, getting home about 3 a.m.

“Mrs. Lane was alarmed when she learned in the morning that her husband had not yet returned, but that his horse had been found by the roadside. It was suggested that he might come out on the 9 o’clock B&O train. He did not come, however, and the families were no longer merely uneasy, they were alarmed. Mr. Early and the Lane boy returned to Washington, but failed to find any trace of the missing huckster.”

When the two returned from town and were passing down the lane about 100 yards from the pike, at a point near a watering trough, they noticed a hat on the lower side of the road and over a fence a couple of handkerchiefs.

“The finding of them was not the only thing to arouse suspicion of foul play,” the newspaper reported. “Their condition was suggestive of a bloody tragedy, whether murder or not, remains to be determined. The front rim of the hat, a stiff black pot, was broken down and the rear part of the crown crushed and muddy. Inside were the stains of blood, it having the appearance of having contained possibly a half pint of the life fluid. The handkerchiefs also were bloody, and a chicken feather clung to one of them.”

Rumors fly

Word of the discovery spread quickly, and by late afternoon on Sunday dozens of curious people had flocked to the scene of the supposed murder and joined a search of the area. Rumors flew. One falsely claimed a body was found in a neighboring farm’s well, its hands bound and skull crushed. Four men were said to have been seen traveling east quickly through Beallsville with something the size of a person bound in a blanket in the bed of their wagon.

Some said Harry had some financial difficulty and may have escaped it by staging his own death, killing a chicken to fill his hat with its blood.

Harry’s parents, Robert Johnson Lane and his wife, Sarah, had left Saturday morning for the German Baptist (or Dunkard) Church along Ten Mile Creek, some eight miles away. They spent the night there, returning late Sunday afternoon to find their farm the center of a frenzied search for their missing son. Robert Lane insisted Harry had no money problems and was sure he was killed for the $200 he was carrying. His friends portrayed Harry as “a youth of good habits, scarcely touching liquor,” according to the Daily Reporter. They denounced as absurd the idea that he would abandon his family and pull such a stunt.

Among those at the scene Sunday were Washington Police Chief John Orr and county Detective William McBride, who were baffled by the presence of evidence yet the absence of a body. They were unable to determine at that time if a crime had been committed.

It was not until the following day that a discovery nearby convinced them that something heinous had happened there, and to find the killers they must first find the corpse of Harry Lane.

Next: A massive search and a convenient suspect