The Murder of Andrew Rowland

Part 1: The Life and Times (and Murder) of Andrew Rowland

Andrew Rowland was born in 1820 at Washington County, Maryland.  He was a son of John Rowland and Nancy Zimmerman.  Andrew was a member of the fourth generation of the Rowland family in this county.  His great-grandfather, Jacob Rowland, was the first of this line in Washington County.  Jacob built the Agreed In Peace historic homestead about 1790, which still stands today.  The early settlers of this area were predominately German, with a mixture of Brethren and Mennonite religious affiliations.

Andrew was a successful farmer, having acquired a large tract of land, about four miles south of Hagerstown.  His farm was located on the Sharpsburg Turnpike near the intersection of College Road, which leads to St James College.  Washington County lies in the narrow western portion of the state of Maryland.  Andrew’s farm was just eight miles east of the West Virginia border and 12 miles south of the Mason-Dixon line (Pennsylvania border). He also owned property in Boonsboro, a town about nine miles south of his residence.

Mary Ann Bear, a descendant of another prominent early Washington county German family, married Andrew in 1846. They had five children together from 1847 to 1854: Isaac, Rosanne, Barbara, George, and Lizzie.  Sadly, Mary Ann passed away in 1863. After his wife’s death, Andrew quickly remarried.  This time to Mary Elizabeth Gelwicks, a woman 20 years his junior, and only seven years older than Andrew’s oldest son.  Andrew Rowland and his new wife never had children.

Apple Butter Time

It was a cold October weekend in 1868, and many inhabitants of the Rowland place were preparing for apple butter day, a highly anticipated annual event on the Rowland farm. The Rowlands had designated Monday, October 19, as the day for boiling apples, and the apples, kettle, firewood, and canning jars had to be ready.  Jennie Thompson, the live-in servant affectionately known as Aunt Jennie, was put in charge of making sure that everything would come together.  Word was out. Friends, family, and neighbors all had plans to come by to participate.

Ten people were staying at the farm on the Sunday night before apple butter day:  Andrew and his wife Mary, their son George (age 16), their daughter Lizzie (age 14), Mary’s father Charles Gelwicks, Andrew’s friend Lewis Snyder, hired hand Charles Coursey, hired hand Pryor Thompson, servant (and wife of Pryor) Jennie Thompson, and the Thompson’s grandson Charley Lee.

The Murder

On Sunday, Andrew and his friend Lews Snyder, took the buggy down to Boonsboro to collect the rent on some property Andrew owned, and to engage in some drinking.

It was about 9 pm by the time they returned to the Rowland farm, and everyone there was already in bed. Mary Rowland got up out of bed and served Andrew and Lewis some supper when they returned from Boonsboro.  They all stayed up a while, engaging in conversation, finally going to bed around midnight.

An hour or so later, Mary Rowland was awakened by a noise like someone “being hit in the face.”  She asked her husband what was the matter, and when she received no response, she summoned her father, Charles Gelwicks. Charles found a light, and upon entering the bedroom, discovered that Andrew Rowland was dead and covered in blood.  Screams of “murder” awakened all in the house, who then rushed to witness the grizzly scene.

Charles Gelwicks dispatched Pryor Thompson to Hagerstown to get the Coroner.  Three doctors, McKee, Tobey, and Blake arrived at about 10 am to perform the post mortem examination. 

Someone had bashed in the side of his head, murdering Andrew Rowland as he slept during the early morning hours of October 19, 1868.  There would be no apple butter made today.

Newspaper Accounts

The Baltimore Sun, on October 23, 1868, published an article headlined “A Mysterious and Shocking Murder,” which it obtained from the Hagerstown Free Press:

A Mysterious and Shocking Murder.  On Monday morning last, between the hours of one and two o’clock, Mr. Andrew Rowland, a well-known farmer, about fifty years of age, residing a short distance from the Hagerstown and Sharpsburg turnpike, near the road leading from said turnpike to the College of St. James, was brutally murdered in his bed by the side of his wife, having been struck on the side of the face and head with a club. The main points of the testimony before the coroner’s inquest held by Justice Biershing, of this town, were in substance about as follows:

Mr. Rowland retired at a late hour on Sunday night, in company with his wife, and both at once went to sleep.  At the hour above stated, Mrs. Rowland was awakened by a peculiar noise, as if someone had been hit in the face; She asked her husband what was the matter, and receiving no answer, she called her father, Mr. C. F. GeIwicks, who was sleeping in an adjoining room.  He immediately went to her room, but before entering it, he heard someone retreating from the premises, whom he called after.  A candle was lit when Mr. Rowland was found dead, having been struck a terrible blow upon the right side of his face and head, fracturing his jaw-bone, and causing other injuries which must have proved instantly fatal.  Besides Mr. Gelwicks, there were in the house a son and daughter of Mr. Rowland, a young man named Snyder, and a colored man and his wife; but these were all sound asleep, and knew nothing of the affair until awakened by the alarm.

The jury, after a pretty thorough investigation, and a post mortem examination made by Drs., McKee, Tobey, and Blake, rendered a [coroner’s] verdict that the deceased came to his death by the hands of someone unknown to them.

The Herald and Torch Light newspaper of Hagarstown, Maryland called the murder “one of the boldest and most startling that ever occurred in this part of the country” in their October 21, 1868 edition. 

This is not the end of our story…it is only the beginning.

• Part 1: The Life and Times (and Murder) of Andrew Rowland, published February 22, 2022.
• Part 2: Arrests Made, Trial Date Set, published February 23, 2022.
• Part 3: The State Presents Its Case, published February 24, 2022.
• Part 4: Mounting a Defense, published February 25, 2022.
• Part 5: The Verdict, published February 26, 2022.

References and Additional Information

Featured image: The Rowland-Stoner House, Washington County, Maryland

DNA: Andrew Rowland, and the entire Washington county Rowland genetic line, are part of Rowland Y-DNA Group I.  If you are related to this line, please consider joining the Rowland Xref Project.

Apple Butter History: Apple Butter Making through History description and photos from Musselman’s Apple Butter

Grandma Moses:

Apple Butter Making is among a handful of paintings based on Moses’ Virginia memories. The house in the picture is the Dudley Place, one of several farms the Moses family occupied as tenants during their years down South.

“Late summer was the time for apple butter making,” Moses wrote in her autobiography. “The apple butter was considered a necessity.”

To make apple butter, you take two barrels of sweet cider (you grind apples and make sweet cider first), then you put them on in a big brass kettle over a fire out in the orchard and start it to boiling. You want three barrels of quartered apples, or snits, as they called them, with cores taken out, and then you commence to feed those in, and stirring and keeping that stirrer going. . . . Womenfolks would keep that going, feeding in all the apples until evening. Then the young folks would come in to start stirring. They’d have two—a boy and a girl—to take hold of the handle. They’d have a regular frolic all night out in the orchard.