Murder of a Member of the Secor Family in Pelham in 1843

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In 1843, a local man named Abraham Devoe murdered Mary Secor, an elderly member of the distinguished Secor family of the Manor of Pelham. A brief account of the tragic event appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The article is transcribed below, followed by a citation to its source.

"SHOOTING A RELATIVE. - An awful tragedy occurred at Pelham, Westchester county, on Tuesday of last week. A person named Abraham Devoe loaded a foltowing piece [sic - fowling piece], and going to the residence of his aunt, named Mary Secor, a lady seventy-six years of age, deliberately shot her dead. He was taken into custody, and when asked why he committed the horrid deed, said he had been commanded so to do to atone for a grievous sin he had committed. He is doubtless laboring under monomania."

Source: Shooting a Relative, Brooklyn Eagle, Feb. 20, 1843, p. 2.

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