WEST ORANGE, NJ — “Crime, Passion, and Punishment in Gilded Age New Jersey.” This subtitle for the nonfiction book “Murder on the Mountain,” by Peter J. Wosh and Patricia L. Schall, is just as intriguing and captivating as the book itself. In this book, the married duo of Wosh and Schall examine and relate a case of murder that occurred in West Orange in the late 1800s.
Back in 1879, John Meierhofer, a West Orange farmer, was shot in the head. Police arrested his wife, Margaret Meierhofer, and one of the farm’s boarders, Frank Lammens. Though only one of them could have pulled the trigger and killed John Meierhofer, both were brought to trial for the crime, in a joint case that fascinated the nation. Though each pointed fingers at the other in the trial, both were convicted, and, in 1881, both were executed for the crime in Newark. Margaret Meierhofer now holds the distinction of being the last woman to be executed in New Jersey.
In addition to relating the facts of the case, “Murder on the Mountain” provides a detailed picture of West Orange at that time, focusing heavily on its societal makeup, which clearly influenced the trial’s outcome.
Wosh was first drawn to the case after receiving a print of a map of West Orange from 1871 as a gift. In locating his West Orange home on the map, he discovered that it once bordered the Meierhofer farm. Further research into the Meierhofer farm astounded him, as he was not expecting it to lead to a grisly murder case. According to Wosh, researching this book was, at times, “somewhat eerie.”
“On many an evening we sat out on our deck having dinner and staring out at the old Meierhofer property — which was next door to us — where the murder took place. It is still pretty wooded, and it was quite strange to try to imagine the 19th-century landscape, the goings-on at the farmhouse and the murder that took place there in the late 1870s,” Wosh told the West Orange Chronicle. “At one point we visited the ruins of the old Essex County Jail in Newark — near the current New Jersey Institute of Technology campus — where the executions took place, found an opening in the fence and made our way into the courtyard where Margaret and Frank were hanged. It was quite overwhelming and emotional.
“One of the interesting things about researching the murder in the town was coming to a new understanding of the landscape, the mountains and the terrain,” he continued. “All of those factors influenced life during the Victorian era before suburbanization, industrialization and modern transportation completely changed life up on the mountain and down in the valley. And the old saying that ‘the past is a foreign country’ certainly rang true for us.”
Wosh and Schall’s meticulous research and keen observations make this book a must-read for local history buffs, or even those with just a passing interest in local history. Sadly, Schall did not live to see the book published; she died in 2020.
“I think we made a great team and brought different skills to the project. My career and background largely had been in history and archives, so I was able to take advantage of the research skills that I had picked up over the years. Pat had a true love of English and language, and she had a sophisticated understanding of storytelling and how to construct a narrative. So I think we complemented each other well, and she was always excited to visit archives and conduct historical research, a new thing for her,” Wosh said. “Once she passed away, the project became a true labor of love. I am sad that she did not live to see the publication of the book, but hope that on some metaphysical level she knows that I was able to bring her good work to light.”
That good work led to a lot of fascinating revelations about West Orange’s past — revelations not visible to the naked eye today. For instance, Wosh and Schall were surprised to learn of the extensive role farming played in the community. Many of these intricacies of West Orange life in the 1870s directly led to the murder case’s result.
“The lack of any municipal infrastructure — police, fire, high school — during that period was also a major factor in the proceedings, and the peculiarities of the 19th-century legal system certainly became a fascinating subtext,” Wosh said. “Then there was the politics of land as older and wealthier farm residents in West Orange began cashing out their holdings to real estate developers. The community tensions that boiled beneath the surface and became revealed during the trial certainly made us consider what it was like to live in a village where seemingly minor incidents became major conflicts and caused division. And it was interesting to discover how the valley, the hill country and Llewellyn Park really constituted different worlds, each with their own ethnic makeups, economies and cultures.
It seems likely in the book that Margaret Meierhofer was a victim not only of state execution, but of the region’s many biases against independent women and immigrants. While it is impossible at this point in time to state conclusively that she was innocent, the evidence seems to bear that out.
“I hope readers take away the fact that there were no ‘good old days’ and the idea that some mythical ‘greatness’ in American culture can somehow be restored if we just magically turn back the clock to some earlier time is a dangerous concept. Justice has always been difficult to achieve,” Wosh said. “The fact that two people in this story were put to death largely owing to where they came from, how they looked and — in the case of Margaret — the fact that she did not behave in the womanly ways that her male judges and jurists would have preferred certainly offer some historical and contemporary lessons. Every generation has had to cope with issues involving immigration, economic tensions, and human rights. Of course those tensions play out differently based on particular historical circumstances. The American dream has always been, and continues to be, a work in progress. I think that by trying to understand the lives of marginal people, social outcasts and those who did not fit in, we achieve a much richer understanding of particular cultures at specific historical moments.”
To purchase a copy of “Murder on the Mountain,” visit tinyurl.com/ytswjtn6.
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