Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1879 — A Wife’s Devotion. [ARTICLE]

A Wife’s Devotion.

The intense devotion of a wife to her husband was witnessed in the recent execution of Walter Watson, at Newport, Vermillion county, Ind. Everybody but the poor wife believed the man guilty of the crime of murder. She refused to credit the evidence, and every day during his confinement and his trial she ministered to his comfort. She took her babe in her arms, and went to Indianapolis and made an earnest appeal to the Governor in his behalf, and even ascended the scaffold with him when led to his death. A cor respondent says: “To the clergyman who would have hindered her from mounting the scaffold she said, ‘ When I was married, I promised to cleave to my husband, for better or for worse, and I am going to keep my promise, so far as God will let me.’ Holding the murderer’s hand—white, no doubt, in her love-maddened eye, as if it had never been stained with blood—she ascended the ladder amid a stillness that was painfully audible. Two chairs were placed over the fatal trap—he sat in one, she in another. She tenderly caressed his hand, and then fell, sobbing convulsively, on his shoulder. In the midst of her heart-breaking grief the drop fell; she was a widow, and she sat there with staring, stony, tearless, despairing eyes, until led away by the Sheriff.”