17: Confessions
Supplement to Endnotes
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Endnote 2) Something was certainly going on with Mary, Luther and property. The Troy Daily Times, June 10, 1867 repeated an account about how Hiscock had been trying to cancel some mortgage in Onondaga. The account had a confused chronology. It claimed that Mary had first come to know Luther when, upon inheriting a large sum, she visited the county surrogate to help protect her estate from George. The story couldn’t have been true as Luther was no longer the surrogate when Mary’s father died. A similar, earlier, account is found in the Albany Evening Journal (1866). But the link I have is now dead. When I find time I will try to reverse engineer the address (below) to pinpoint the date of the publication in the Albany Evening Journal:​
Endnote 3) There are too many conflicting reports and testimonies to write with certainty about what happened between Mary and Luther. For the purposes of this story, I define rape as any sexual act from Luther that Mary did not want. If she did not voice an objection because, for example, she did not believe that consent was hers to give or not give, I still see it as a kind of statutory rape given her nebulous ability to consent. The problem is that the private letters of George suggest that she learned to refuse her husband’s sexual advances. It is also dangerous to assume that because she accepted sentimental gifts from Luther she must have welcomed a sexual connection with Luther. There is too much proof that suggests that she was traumatized by her encounters with him.
The difficulty of a woman needing to prove her purity, and subject herself to the interrogation of male authorities, made it hard for poor women, and black women especially, to prove rape. I have drawn heavily from Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), especially chapters 1 and 2; also, in her work on rape in the late colonial and early republic, Sharon Block does not contemplate the Civil War era; but her findings speak to much of the nineteenth century. Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
In a letter from Mary to George, Mary seemed to blame George for what happened between here and Luther, as she wished George had watched over the friendship between Mary and Luther more closely. This enraged George as it seemed to cast blame on him. But it might also have been Mary's way of broaching the issue that a wife might need help from a husband in regards to aggressive men who used friendships to cover their designs. George wrote: “One sentence in her last letter was (killing) she spoke of a gentleman who ‘watched his wife’s friendships.’ (a jealous friend of ours). Now she gave her honor + mine to the only man I ever forbade her to associate with." See: George to Olive Cole, 4/12/1868, Cole Family Papers, UCLA.
Endnote 5) On the pencil amendment to the confession: John Cuyler said that when he saw the confession, Mary’s penciled statement was not on it. The bailiff testified that when he took the letter from Cole at the jail, the penciled amendment was on it. For Cuyler, see Syracuse Journal, 4/29/1868; for Alonzo Atkins the bailiff, Syracuse Journal 4/30, evening, 1868; Remarkable Trials, p.299.
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Endnote 9) This exchange reveals much about Mary Cole’s habits of consumption as she clearly purchased enough jewelry, and exclusively from one jewelry firm, to make such a confrontation a betrayal of her guilt. Also, the jeweler, L. Dean Hawley, carried around titles like “General” and “Colonel” from his participation in the local militia -- the same unit to which Cole had belonged before the war. The Willard & Hawley store was located on East Genesee Street, which was near the Jervis House where the Cole’s would soon move. Remarkable Trials, pp. 377-379; Dwight H. Bruce, ed., Onondaga’s Centennial: Gleanings of a Century (Boston: The Boston History Company, Publishers, 1896), pp. 35-36, 70-71.