It happened in Windham 190 years ago!

After the Revolutionary War, pensions were available to veterans and/or their dependents. These records are fairly easy to find via the Internet – and oftentimes, newspaper articles embellished these legal proceedings.

The following is from an 1823 edition of New England Farmer and concerns two neighbors from East Windham, Jonah Austin and Jedediah Elliott. Austin settled on the Nash Road after serving three different enlistments. Elliott also lived a little further up on the Nash Road, near the end where a tiny cemetery is located in the woods.

“At a term of the Circuit Court held in Portland, Jedediah Elliot and Jonah Austin, two old Revolutionary soldiers, were tried on an indictment for willful misrepresentation of the amount of their property, made under oath, in order to entitle them to the benefit for the relief of Revolutionary Soldiers.”

It appeared at the trial that they both held leases of small farms in the town of Windham, the place of their residence, a knowledge of which they had suppressed. It was thought by many that the false representation was the result of ignorance, rather than of premeditated crime.

Austin was acquitted but Elliot received the following sentence, viz: “that he should pay a fine to the United States of ten dollars, be imprisoned 60 days, and stand in the pillory one hour.”

The latter part of this punishment, the Court observed, was imposed because it was absolutely required by statute; but the District Attorney was requested to use his influence with the President (James Monroe) to obtain the remission of that odious part of the sentence, which the Court had no power to omit or avoid.

In Portland, the whipping post and pillory were located on the “training field,” near or on part of today’s Eastern Cemetery. The pillory was a tall post about 25 feet high. About half way up from the ground was a square platform, and two planks crosswise of the post, with an opening for the neck, and two below for the wrists. Two culprits could be pilloried at once. Boys were allowed to pelt them with eggs.

Austin died 10 years after his trip to court. He was 80 years old and is buried in the Austin Cemetery on Nash Road; Elliott was 84 at the time of his death in 1844 and is buried in the Purinton Cemetery on Route 202.

As part of his sentence for willful misrepresentation of the amount his property in Windham was worth, Jedediah Elliot had to stand in the pillory for one hour.  
Jedediah Elliot, whose grave in the Purinton Cemetery on Route 202 is seen above, was one of two Windham residents who were sentenced for fraud in the early 1800s.