“Foggy Winter Cabin”. Free-to-use AI-generated image, from
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December 1781. The rural village of Tomhannock, Rensselaer County, New York…
In the middle of the night, there came a tremendous pounding on the door of the Yates house. When the aged couple who lived there opened the door, they saw their son James standing on the doorstep completely drenched with blood. James then reported to his shocked mother and father had he had just killed five people: his wife and their four children (Murley 2003, page 183; Silver 2009, page 73).
James’ house was half a mile away. Both parents accompanied James back to the scene of the tragedy, and they found the lifeless body of James’ wife in the road, with the dead body of her baby across her chest. Inside the house were the bodies of James’ three other children, their skulls smashed to bits. As they went back outside, they saw that James had also killed the family’s pet dog, two horses, and a cow. He had also tried to kill another cow, which was even then just barely alive, with an axe still sticking out of its body. When asked why he had done this terrible thing, James Yates reported he had done what he had done out of love for God (Silver 2009, page 73).
Later, his neighbors recollected that James Yates “had nothing remarkable in his character” (Silver 2009, page 73), and was “a sane and pedestrian cottager” (Websdale 2010, page 97). He was just an unassuming ordinary guy. In fact, several of his neighbors (including James’ sister and her husband) had called upon the house the previous afternoon and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The Yates were a religious family and James Yates was especially devout. There was no church in the little community of Tomhannock, so neighbors often gathered at each others’ houses for religious observances (Axelrod 2013, page 53). Together, the Yates and their neighbors read verses from the Bible and sang psalms. Later when they were interviewed after the tragedy, James’ sister and the rest of the guests reported that James was very affectionate towards his wife and children when they were there (Websdale 2010, page 97). James had two sons (one 7 and another 5) and two daughters (11 years and 6 months). The neighbors left shortly after 9:00 PM. The two boys went upstairs to bed. 11 year old Rebecca sat by the fireplace. James’ wife cradled the 6 month old infant Diana in her arms while James continued to read from the Bible (Axelrod 2013, page 53).
And then, it happened.
After James Yates was arrested and interrogated by the authorities about why he did what he did, he reported that while he, his wife, and their two daughters were downstairs, suddenly, a bright light shown into the room. Two spirits then appeared to him, one on his right side and another on his left. The spirit on the left commanded James to destroy all of the idols within the house, including the family Bible. The spirit on the right side tried to persuade James not to do it, but he chose to listen to the spirit on the left, whom he called “the good angel”, and James immediately cast the holy scriptures into the fireplace. James’ wife bolted towards the fire and pulled it out before it could be burned, but James then threw it back into the fire and prevented his wife from rescuing it (Websdale 2010, page 97; Axelrod 2013, page 53).
Then James Yates grabbed an axe, ran out the door, and smashed up the family’s sled which was parked outside. Then he ran into the stable and axed one of his horses to death. He then tried to kill the other, but it managed to escape (Axelrod 2013, page 53), but it would later die of its injuries.
When he returned to the house after performing this senseless act of destruction and bloodshed, “the good angel” appeared to him again and warned him that there were more idols, more objects of false worship – his wife and children. They had to be done away with. James Yates immediately obeyed. He ran upstairs to the bedroom where his two boys were sleeping, grabbed the 7 year old and slammed him with full force against the wall that he immediately died. He then took the 5 year old and smashed his skull against the fireplace (Axelrod 2013, pages 53-54).
After seeing that his wife and two daughters had ran out of the house, James Yates once again took up the axe and chased after them. The three survivors were frantically racing up the road to James’ parents’ house half a mile away. When he got to within thirty yards of his wife, James threw the axe at her, the blade slicing open her hip and causing her to drop the baby. Taking hold of the 6 month old, James slammed its fragile body against a wooden fence (Axelrod 2013, page 54).
Then James’ wife chose run back towards James, probably out of a deep motherly instinct to come to her baby’s rescue. At this moment, James Yates appears to have momentarily snapped out of it. Realizing what he had done, he called out to her saying “Come, then, my love. We have one child left. Let us be thankful for that. What is done is right, we must not repine. Come, let me embrace you. Let me know that you do indeed love me”, and the two embraced (Axelrod 2013, page 54).
Then “the good angel” came back. “This is also an idol!” the voice spoke from behind James. Instantly he broke away from her, ripped off a plank of wood from the fence, and slammed it against her head, bringing her to the ground. Believing the blow might have just knocked her unconscious, James Yates proceeded to smash the wooden board into her face over and over and over again until she was completely unrecognizable (Axelrod 2013, page 54).
Then James heard whimpering and sobbing coming from inside the barn. It was 11 year old Rebecca, his oldest child. She begged her father to spare her life, and once again James appears to have come to his senses, if only briefly. He later recalled that he thought “that to destroy all my idols was a hard task”. Therefore, taking her up by the hand, he asked Rebecca to sing and dance for him. The child, assuredly scared out of her mind, did what her father requested, probably shaking with terror and voice trembling. But then James once more felt that he had a duty to perform and he couldn’t allow his feelings to get in the way of his duty, and so, taking a small wood-chopping hatchet that had been stuck into a log, he split her skull in half (Axelrod 2013, page 54)
The authorities held James Yates for two days at the home of a neighbor, Mrs. Ann Eliza Bleeker (Websdale 2010, page 97; Barnard and Shapiro 2009, pages 278-279). While confined at the Bleeker house, a Lutheran minister arrived and urged James Yates to pray and repent his actions, but he refused. James Yates replied he was merely doing God’s will. He then called out to the heavens “My father, thou knowest that it was in obedience to thy commands, and for thy glory, that I have done this deed” (Websdale 2010, page 97).
Clearly the man had suffered an intense psychotic episode. The historian Peter Silver proposed that James Yates may have suffered from schizophrenia (Silver 2009, pages 73-74), but there’s no way of proving this. We might speculate if James Yates experienced a hallucination or if he heard voices, but such after-the-fact musings are purely academic. It’s also entirely possible that the man was genuinely tricked by a demon into murdering his family. After all, according to William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the Devil hath the power to assume pleasing shapes. Regardless of the reasons and motives, James Yates was declared to be insane and was imprisoned in Albany for the remainder of his life (Murley 2003, page 183). I have not been able to find any source which states how long he remained behind bars or the date and circumstances of his death.
But unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. One year later on December 11, 1782 in the little community of Wethersfield, Connecticut, a merchant named William Beadle went on his own killing spree murdering his wife and their four children. Like James Yates, William Beadle lived an ordinary unassuming life. A native of southern England, he had been living in America for the past twenty years, of which ten years had been spent as a resident of Wethersfield. He had married “an amiable woman of a reputable family” and together they had one son and three daughters. Reports indicated that he was a very loving husband and caring father, and he took a great interest in making sure that his children had a good education. However, James Yates and William Beadle differ in one crucial way: James Yates was a Puritanical religious zealot, while William Beadle was an avowed Deist who spurned organized religion and scorned any reports of divine revelations. Unlike the murders committed by James Yates the previous year, William Beadle’s killings were not committed on the spur of the moment in the midst of a psychotic fit. No, these deaths had been carefully planned out beforehand. Apparently, he had drugged his wife and children (possibly with opium or laudanum), killed them in their sleep, and then blew his own brains out with a pistol (Barnard and Shapiro 2009, pages 284-286).
The murders committed by James Yates and William Beadle were shocking and made headline news across much of the United States. These shocking atrocities would become the inspiration for Charles Brockden Brown’s novel Wieland, published in 1798, about a man named Theodore Wieland who hears voices telling him to murder his family (Axelrod 2013, pages 53-58).
The shocking murders committed by James Yates are a grave warning to this day of the dangers of religious fanaticism. So many times, people have committed horrible actions without hesitation or examination because they truly believed they were acting in accordance with the wishes of a higher power: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the wars of religion in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Salem witch trials, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the list goes on and on. Deus Vult – “God wills it”.
Bibliography
Axelrod, Alan. Charles Brockden Brown: An American Tale. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.
Barnard, Philip; Shapiro, Stephen, eds. Wieland; or The Transformation: An American Tale, with Related Texts. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.
Murley, Jean (2003). “Ordinary Sinners and Moral Aliens: The Murder Narratives of Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe”. In Breen, Margaret Sönser, ed. Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Amsterdam: Rodopi BV, 2003. Pages 181-200.
Silver, Peter. Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
Websdale, Neil. Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Page 97.
Categories: History, Uncategorized
DINOSAURS AND BARBARIANS 
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