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On October 25th, one hundred and
eleven years ago, Joseph Ably died in Chester Penitentiary where
he had spent ten years of his life paying for a crime he may or
may not have committed—the murder of his father, Jacob Ably.
At the time of his death, it was said, “Joseph Ably’s
death marks the close of the last chapter of the history of a
terrible crime that it is believed by many was the culmination
of a series of greater crimes on the same spot. The history of which never were and never will be written,
and the secrets of which are buried in the graveyard of the
murdered man…”
The cold-blooded murder of Jacob
Ably rocked Jo Daviess County.
It happened shortly after dark on a Sunday evening, the
16th of September in 1877, at the secluded Ably
farmstead near Council Hill Station.
Sunday visitors to the home had left, and Jacob and his
daughter Magdalena, 12, were coming out of the milk cellar when
fatal shots were fired. Jacob
survived through the night, dying in the morning hours of the 17th.
The three Ably boys: Jacob, Henry, and Joseph, were all
initially arrested for the crime, but Joseph was the one to be
convicted.
The family had been surrounded by ugly
rumors since the January before when Jacob’s wife Catherine
had been found dead, by hanging in the yard of the farm.
The coroner’s inquest brought a verdict of suicide, and
Jacob testified that she had been depressed due to an illness.
But there were other rumblings of cruel treatment by her
husband, who had already run the oldest son off the farm for
attempting to protect her.
And we still have not told the full tale of
the Ably case. For
in that fall of 1877, there was collected from the residents of
the area a story of events some thirty-odd years before.
This story leaves little doubt that there had been some
uneasiness about happenings on the farmstead at a much earlier
time, and those feelings, nurtured quietly for three decades, at
last were aired publicly. Because
this story was so prominent at that time, it must be told as
part of the Ably Murder history, though we are no closer to its
truth or non-truth than the reporter was in 1887.
In the mid-1840s, a man named
Garrett Bias moved to Jo Daviess County with his family of wife,
daughter, and son. They
settled on the lonely and secluded farmstead that was later to
be the Ably murder scene. The
family hired a young unmarried servant girl named Catherine.
Suspicions were first aroused when Mrs. Bias died
suddenly one morning and was rapidly buried. Within a short period of time, Catherine’s position in the
household was elevated to that of housekeeper.
Six months after the death of her mother, the daughter of
Garrett Bias died also. After
this event, Garrett Bias married the former servant girl,
Catherine.
As Catherine and Garrett Bias settled into
the first few years of married life on the farm, two children
were born to them. Emily
in 1847 and Catherina in 1849.
Hiram Bias, the grown son of Garrett, left this part of
the state in 1848. A
young Swiss immigrant named Jacob Ably came to live with the
family as a hired man. Tragedy,
never far from the Bias family, struck again shortly after the
birth of Catherina. Garrett
Bias died. The cause was alleged to be the cholera that raged through Jo
Daviess County in 1849 and 1850.
Catherine Bias was now a widow.
But Catherine did not remain a widow
long. She soon
married the young immigrant, Jacob Ably.
So, our isolated bit of land, the homestead chosen and
settled by the Bias family, was now in the hands of the servant
girl and hired man. The
two remaining members of the Bias family, Emily and Catherina,
lived only until 1860, and Catherine Ably was heir to their
land.
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| The Ably House as it
appears today. |
Catherine and Jacob remained on the land
and brought five children of their own into the world.
Three boys and two girls were born between 1850 and 1865.
Jacob Jr., Henry, Joseph, Sarah, and Magdalena.
Jacob and Catherine spent twenty-six years on the farm,
though, in light of some of the information published at the
time of the trial, they were not always happy ones.
These few isolated acres in the northern part of Jo
Daviess County had not provided a happy haven for the Bias
family, and the Ably family life ended there also with gunshots
in September of 1877.
Initial arrests were made on September 17
in the case of Jacob Ably’s murder.
Henry, Jacob, Jr. and Joseph Ably, along with their
uncle, Peter Miller, Sr. and Cousin, Peter Miller, Jr., were
placed under arrest; but Peter Miller, Sr. was later released.
The three Ably boys faced trial in the November term of
court, Galena, where Joseph Ably, only nineteen years old at the
time, was convicted of the murder. He later signed a confession accepting responsibility for the
crime.
In his confession, Joseph Ably
stated, “I did this deed because I hated father for his
treatment of mother, and I was also afraid that he would make
way with us children and go back to Switzerland.”
He was delivered to Joliet Prison and later
moved to the new Chester Penitentiary to help complete the work
on that new facility. He
died there ten years later, after spending one third of his life
in prison.
Peter Miller, Jr. was not tried until the
following spring in Freeport, and was acquitted, though Joseph
Ably testified that Miller fried a gun at his father.
The Galena press at the time expressed concern over the
lack of justice in the verdict.
A young man’s life was ruined and
lost. Were his
thoughts of his father so venomous that he would plan to murder
him? Had he been
convinced by others who later abandoned him that he was the one
who must bring about retribution for the cruelty of his father
toward his mother? Was
Jacob to blame for Catherine’s death?
And the final thing we must ask is what role did
Catherine and Jacob play in those early days on the farm, when
the Bias family members, one by one, were laid to rest.
perhaps the questions we have about this long chain of
tragic events make the Ably murder case on of the most
fascinating stories in Jo Daviess County History.
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