Local woman last in state to be executed on gallows
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: Today the Sun-Gazette offers the next installment in a weekly history series that tells the stories of those who came before us.)
Catherine Miller's 29-year-old body shook with fear as she stood next to George Smith. The trap door of the gallows creaked under their feet, and the rough rope hung loose around their necks.
Convicted of killing Catherine Miller's 59-year-old husband, Andrew Miller, with a club and a rope, the two received their sentence by hanging on Feb. 3, 1881, in the Lycoming County Jail.
"Before my death I want to speak a few words of warning to all who come after me," Catherine Miller said to the crowd gathered around the gallows. "I wish none to pursue such a course of life as I have. And on the gallows I raise a warning voice. Heed the lesson."
It was a cold winter morning, but nearly 200 people gathered in the courtyard of the county jail on West Third Street to witness the first, and only, double hanging in Lycoming County. Catherine Miller also was the last woman to be hung in Pennsylvania.
Today that property is known as The Cell Block, a nightclub and party venue filled with drinks, music and frivolity inside the former prison. But the atmosphere on that day was a somber, silent and unfortunate scene.
The horrible deed
Smith and Catherine Miller were lovers who conspired to kill Andrew Miller, according to the Gazette and Bulletin, a forerunner of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.
"I did the deed myself. She laid the plan," Smith said as he also stood on the gallows. "She often asked me to do it. When I had him killed, she gave me the rope to hang him up."
Catherine and Andrew Miller were married when she was 18 years old. Although Catherine Miller's family denied it, she claimed she was pressured into the marriage by her parents who had made a deal with Andrew Miller to take care of them for the remainder of their lives.
After her parents were both deceased, Catherine Miller said her husband stopped taking care of her and her three young girls. She had known Smith since they were young, and began having an affair with him two years prior to the murder.
According to Smith's account, Catherine Miller asked him to kill her husband multiple times. But she never confessed to this, and while she admitted to attempting to cover it up after the fact, Catherine Miller held to the end that she never asked Smith to kill her husband.
"I never at anytime urged George to kill my husband, and always tried to prevent him from doing so," Catherine Miller said. "Although he talked to me about it, he always introduced the subject, and had I know that George was to kill my husband that night, I should have stopped it."
The night of March 18, 1880, Smith went to the Miller home after the family had gone to bed. He made a noise outside to entice Andrew Miller from the house and down to the barn. He hit him multiple times with a club until he was unconscious.
Then Miller said he went up to the house where Catherine Miller was waiting with some rope. Smith used the rope to hang Andrew Miller in the barn, an attempt to make it look like a suicide.
"After the deed, Smith said he thought I would live a happier life than I had lived," Catherine Miller said. "I told him I did not know and he replied that after Miller was buried we would go away."
The circumstances around the death of "old man Miller," as the community called him, were too suspicious, and an investigation was ordered.
Eventually Smith was arrested and he confessed to the crime, claiming it was Catherine Miller's plan from the start.
Sentence, 'hanged by the neck'
A trial was held on May, 8, 1880, before a jury of 12 men, with Judge Hugh H. Cummin presiding. After a guilty verdict was returned, the couple's defense attorney asked for a retrial from Cummin but was denied.
At the sentencing, Cummin said the verdict was determined by a group of 12 "impartial and conscientious" men who weighed the evidence and confessions of both defendants.
"I cannot think that either of you alone would have killed this poor old man, who never did harm to either of you," Cummin said. "It required your combined efforts to perpetuate this wicked deed. Thus you each have the blood of two persons upon you, namely: that of your victim, and of each other."
Cummin went on to say that the two convicted murderers would see no mercy in this life, but instead said they should spend the rest of their days in prayer, asking forgiveness from God, the only one who could give it now.
As those gathered in the courtroom rose to their feet, Cummin handed down what he referred to as "the dreadful sentence of the law."
Catherine Miller and Smith were to be "hanged by the neck until dead."
"And may God have mercy on your soul," Cummin said.
Their last days
The condemned duo spent their remaining days in the Lycoming County Jail, and Catherine Miller reportedly was sick for most of it. A postponement of four weeks was requested, and Gov. Henry Martyn Hoyt Sr. granted it.
Additionally, a petition was circulated for some months by the counsel and friends of Smith and Catherine Miller. It asked for the sentence of death to be changed to life in prison, and eventually it was sent to the Board of Pardons in Harrisburg. It ultimately was rejected.
Newly elected County Sheriff Col. Samuel Wilson handled the proceedings and the hanging was set for Feb. 3, 1881.
The night before the hanging, Catherine Miller and Smith were allowed visitors. Though the efforts of Wilson, Catherine Miller saw her three children for the last time on Feb. 2.
The Bulletin recounted the scene as emotional and "affecting." As the children entered the narrow cell, they threw their arms around their mother's neck and embraced. The family talked and hugged as long as they were able.
"When the last embrace, the last words of parting and the last kiss was given, every heart was full and the very associations of the place were clothed in mourning, lamentation and woes," the Bulletin reported.
The next morning, Catherine Miller and Smith were taken out and hanged.