Ocey Snead

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Ocey Snead
Snead circa 1905-1909
Born 1885
Flag of United States Manhattan
Died November 29, 1909
Flag of United States East Orange, New Jersey
Spouse Fletcher Wardlaw Snead
Parents Caroline B. Wardlaw (c1850-1913) and a Martin.
Ocey Snead
Ocey Snead
Ocey Snead suicide note
Ocey Snead suicide note

Oceana Wardlaw Martin (c. 1885 - November 29, 1909) aka Ocey Snead, was drugged and drowned in East Orange, New Jersey by her own family to collect the $32,000 in insurance money.

Contents

[edit] Birth

Oceana was born around 1885, probably in Manhattan, New York City, New York to Caroline B. Wardlaw (c1850-1913) who had married a Martin.

[edit] Aunts

Caroline Wardlaw had two sisters: Mary L. Wardlaw (1849-?) who had married Fletcher Tillman Snead (1829-1891) in 1874 in Macon County, Georgia; and Virginia G. Wardlaw (1852-1910) who never married. Mary L. Wardlaw had a son: Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875-1955). All three sisters were most likely born in Randolph County, Georgia.

[edit] Grandmother

All three siblings were the daughters of Martha Eliza (Seaborn?) (1828-1910), who had married John B. Wardlaw (1817-?). John was a Methodist minister. Martha had a sister, Oceana Seaborn (c1815-?) who married a Polluck.

[edit] Marriage

Ocey married Fletcher Wardlaw Snead, her first cousin. Fletcher was born in Oglethorpe, Macon County, Georgia. Together they had the following children: Mary Alberta Snead (1908); and David Pollock Snead (1909-1910). Fletcher was the son of Mary L. Wardlaw and Fletcher Tillman Snead and he had two siblings: John Wardlaw Snead (1878-c1909) and Albert Snead (1880-?). In 1880 Fletcher was living in Oglethorpe, Macon County, Georgia with his parents. Fletcher was previously married to Vashti Gordan McLaurine (1872-?) who was born in Old Lynnville, Giles County, Tennessee. Fletcher and Vashti had the one child together: Robert Tilman Snead (1900-?). Vashti moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma by 1920 and by 1930 she was living in West Palm Beach, Florida with her son.

[edit] Montgomery Female Academy

The Montgomery Female Academy was inherited by Martha Wardlaw and her three daughters: Mary Wardlaw who had married a Snead; Caroline Wardlaw who had married a Martin; and Virginia Wardlaw. They had inherited the property from Oceana Seaborn Polluck who was Martha's sister. Around 1906 Caroline Wardlaw visited Mary Wardlaw Snead's son, John Wardlaw Snead, age 28, who was married and living in Lynville, Tennessee. While there she persuaded John to leave his wife and return with her to Christiansburg, Virginia to teach in the college. Fletcher Wardlaw Snead, the brother of John Wardlaw Snead, was married and living in Tennessee. After a period of time, Fletcher divorced his wife and came to the college and married Ocey Snead, who was his first cousin. Virginia G. Wardlaw became head of the Montgomery Female Academy around 1902.

[edit] Murder of John Wardlaw Snead

John Wardlaw Snead, traveling with Caroline Martin had fallen off a train in what was thought to be a suicide attempt. On another occasion he was pulled from a well by Sonny Correll, caretaker at the college. Weeks later he was found on fire in his nightclothes, his bed saturated with kerosene. That night he died. He had been insured by his aunts and the beneficiary was Virginia Wardlaw.

[edit] Murder of Oceana Wardlaw Martin

Ocey was murdered on November 29, 1909 at 89 East 14th Street, East Orange, New Jersey by her aunt, Mary Wardlaw Snead. The police were called by the family and told there was an "accident". The police then sent a physician to their home. Virginia Wardlaw led Dr. Herbert M. Simmons, the Assistant County Physician, upstairs to a bathroom where he found the nude body of Ocey Snead, sitting in a tub of water with her head tilted under the faucet. There was a suicide note pinned to her clothes beside the bathtub. Virginia Wardlaw's answers to the doctor were suspicious and the police were called to investigate. The note read as follows:

"Last year my little daughter died. Other near and dear kindred too have gone to Heaven. I long to go there too. I have been ill and weak a very long time now. Death will be a blessed relief to me in my sufferings. When you read this I will have committed suicide. My sorrow and pain in this world are greater than I can endure. Ocey W.M. Snead"

[edit] Burial

Ocey was buried on December 7, 1909 at Mount Hope Cemetery, Brooklyn.

[edit] Investigation and Trial

[edit] Fletcher Wardlaw Snead

Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875-1955) was Ocey's husband and first cousin. He was investigated as a suspect in her murder. He was found under an assumed name cooking in a lumber camp in Canada. No incriminating evidence was found against him and he was never charged with her murder.

[edit] Virginia G. Wardlaw

Virginia G. Wardlaw (1852-1910) was Ocey's aunt. She had attended Wellesley College and had never married. She taught at the Price School in Nashville, Tennessee then in 1892 she became the head of the Soule Female College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Around 1902 she moved to the Montgomery Female Academy in Christiansburg, Virginia. She was arrested, but died of self-induced starvation on August 12, 1910 while waiting for the trial to begin. Her body was sent to Christiansburg, Virginia for burial in Sunset Cemetery.

[edit] Mary L. Wardlaw Snead

Mary L. Wardlaw (1849-?) who had married Fletcher Tillman Snead (1829-1891), was Ocey's aunt, and mother-in-law. Fletcher had been the mayor of Oglethorpe, Georgia. She taught at Dr. Norman's School at West 62nd Street in New York City. In 1896 she joined her sister Virginia at the Soule Female College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She plea bargained to a manslaughter charge, but was released on a technicality. She moved to Colorado to live with her other son, Albert Snead (1880-?).

[edit] Caroline B. Wardlaw Martin

Caroline B. Wardlaw (c1850-1913) was Ocey's mother and the most unbalanced of the three sisters. She had married a Martin who was a Colonel, and she may have killed the Colonel to collect the life insurance. She became the principal of Public School 17 in Manhattan on June 3, 1896 but was declared unstable and retired on September 1, 1901. She then moved to the Soule Female College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee to join her sisters. Caroline was sentenced to jail on January 23, 1912 and sent to the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey for a seven year sentence for the death of her daughter. She was declared mentally unstable on May 18, 1912 and was then transferred to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane where she died on June 21, 1913.

[edit] Timeline

[edit] Family of Ocey Martin

  • John B. Wardlaw I (1817-?) who married Martha Eliza Seaborn? (1828-1910) was a South Carolina Supreme Court justice
    • Caroline B. Wardlaw (1847-1913) who married X Martin (c1845-1901), a Colonel, who she may have killed for the $10,000 insurance
      • Ocey Wardlaw Martin (c1880-1909) who married her first cousin Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875-1955)
        • Mary Alberta Snead (1908)
        • David Pollock Snead (1909-1910)
    • Mary E.L. Wardlaw (1849-?) who married Fletcher Tillman Snead (1829-1891) an attorney and mayor of Oglethorpe, Georgia
      • Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875-1955) who married his first cousin Ocey Wardlaw Martin (c1880-1909)
        • Mary Alberta Snead (1908)
        • David Pollock Snead (1909-1910)
      • John Wardlaw Snead (c1875-c1890) was set on fire by his own family to collect the $12,000 insurance
    • Virginia G. Wardlaw (1852-1910) was head of a college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and later one in Christiansburg, Virginia
    • John B. Wardlaw II (1854-?), reverend
    • Albert G. Wardlaw (1856-?), reverend
    • Bessie Warldaw (c1861-?) who married a Spindle

[edit] References

  • Gerald Tomlinson; Seven Jersey Murders (2003) ISBN 1-4134-1205-X
  • Colin Wilson; The Mammoth Book of True Crime (1988) ISBN 0-7867-0536-1
  • Norman Zierold; Three Sisters in Black; Little, Brown and Company (1968)
  • Lillian De La Torre; Who Killed Ocey Snead?; New York Times; October 20, 1968

[edit] Archive

  • University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey Libraries, "Scrapbook of Photographic Evidence Regarding the Death of Ocey Snead," Harrison S. Martland, MD Papers

[edit] Selected coverage in The New York Times

  • New York Times; December 01, 1909; page 01. "Girl in bathtub slain, police say; East Orange authorities find her life had been insured and money borrowed on policy. They hold her companion Miss Wardwell's explanation of how girl's body came to be found in practically empty house unsatisfactory. The charge of murder was preferred by the police of East Orange, New Jersey, just before midnight last night against Virginia Wardlaw, the elderly spinster who reported on Monday evening the alleged suicide of a young woman who, she said, was Mrs. Ocey W.M. Snead, her niece, in a bathtub of the practically empty house in that town which the two had occupied for the last ..."
  • New York Times; December 12, 1909; page 16; "Relatives will aid her. Many families of note in the south are akin to the prisoner. Miss Virginia Wardlaw, who is held in Essex County, New Jersey, in connection with the death of Mrs. Ocey Snead, is well known here, and is related to many of the old families which shaped the business, political, and social life of the Commonwealth in ante-bellum days."
  • New York Times; January 21, 1910; page 01. "Ocey Snead was drugged; Morphine in the stomach of woman found dead in a bathtub. The theory that Ocey W.M. Snead was helpless from the effects of a drug when she was put in the bathtub in which her dead body was found in East Orange, New Jersey, on November 29, is said to have been strengthened by the analysis of her stomach made by Dr. William H. Hicks of Newark."
  • New York Times; June 18, 1910; page 18. "Snead murder case up. Defendants Question Right of Prosecution to Certain Evidence. United States Circuit Court Judge Cross, sitting in Newark, New Jersey, yesterday, heard argument in one phase of the murder of Ocey Snead, which occurred in November, 1909. The case came up on the return of a rule to show causes why certain evidence in the possession of the Essex County prosecutor should not be used against the three Wardlaw sisters, who are in the Essex ..."
  • New York Times; August 12, 1910; page 01. "Miss Wardlaw dies; starved herself; Ocey Snead's Aunt, Soon to Have Been Tried for, Niece's Murder, Had Refused to Eat. Miss Virginia O. Wardlaw, aunt of Mrs. Ocey W.M. Snead, whose body was found in the bathtub of an East Orange, New Jersey, house on November 20, 1909, died yesterday in the House of Detention in Newark, New Jersey, where she was awaiting trial for the murder of her niece. Her sisters, Mrs. Mary Snead and Mrs. Caroline B. Martin, mother of the bathtub victim, are in jail ..."
  • New York Times; September 21, 1910; page 06. "Alienists declare Mrs. Martin insane"
  • New York Times; November 08, 1910; page 07. "Mrs. Martin's cries halt lunacy trial. Mother of Ocey Snead denounces, a witness and criticises the court. At the hearing as to her mental condition before Judge Jay Ten Eyck in Newark, Mrs. Caroline B. Martin, who with her sister, Mrs. Mary Snead, is charged with the murder of her daughter, Mrs. Ocey Snead, in East Orange last November, created a scene yesterday. The court declared a recess of five minutes after Mrs. Martin arose and denounced the witness who was on ..."
  • New York Times; June 21, 1913; page 2. "Caroline B. Martin dies. Had Been Committed as Insane After Confessing to Killing Her Daughter."
  • Note: There are around 80 articles in the New York Times archives involving "Ocey Snead"

[edit] External links

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