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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.
��that a life could be taken with so little disturb- ance."
Ward was hanged at Toledo June 12, 1857.
July 4, 1851, a most foul murder was com- mitted b}' Charles Steingraver, in Ashland County. The victim was Clarinda Vantilburg, a blind girl, aged ten years, who had been left at home while -her parents went to a Sunday- school celebration at Perrysburg. Steingraver, who had been in the employ of the Vantil- burgs, was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be hanged. A motion for a new trial was heard but overruled, and the sentence ordered to be carried into execu- tion January 30, 1852. A large crowd of people collected on that day to see the hang- ing, it being the first case of hanging in Ash- land, which, until 1846, belonged to Richland County. Steingi'aver appeared to be a hard- ened criminal, and marched to the scaffold with a firm step and little apparent regard for his fate. When all was ready, and a moment be- fore the trap was sprung, the Sheriff asked him the question, " Steingraver, are you innocent of the crime of mui'der as charged against you?" With apparent earnestness he replied, " Sheriff, I am innocent." In another moment, his guilty or guiltless soul was launched into another world.
The second murder in this (Ashland) county occurred December 17, 1853. The tragedy had its origin in a matter of 7 cents that had been used at a " raffle." The money belonged to one Noah Mock, but had been appropriated by Thornton Pool, and, in the controversy growing out of this trifling affair, Pool stabbed and killed Mock. The case was tried at the March term. 1854, Pool found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to the Ohio Penitentiary for ten years.
On the morning of March 12, 1870, Mans- field was startled and shocked by the news of the horrible murder committed the night before on Oliver street, in rear of the Atlantic Hotel.
��The victim was Mrs. Mary J. Lunsford, a woman about twenty-eight years of age, who occupied the west part of a story-and-a-half wooden building, the east part of the building being occupied by a negro family named Har- ris. Each part of this house contained two rooms, one above and one below. The murder was committed in the west room up-stairs. The woman's character was not good, it appear- ing that she was the mistress of Ansel L. Rob- inson, a foreman in the Blj^myer, Day & Co.'s works.
It appears that Charity Harris, living in one part of the house, heard, about 1 o'clock at night, smothered screams and groans issuing from the apartment of Mrs. Lunsford. Her husband went out to ascertain the cause, rapped at Mrs. Lunsford's door and called several times, but, as all was quiet, he returned to bed. The same noise was also heard by the watchman at the Aultman & Taylor works, who came over to ascertain the cause, but, finding all quiet, returned. In the morning, there being no signs of life about Mrs. Lunsford's room, an entrance was effected, and she was found lying diagonally across the bed in her night-clothes, with her throat cut, and other cuts and bruises on different parts of her body. Her arm was also bitten in several places, the prints of the teeth being plainly visible. The condition of the bed gave evidence of a terrible struggle, and there was a pool of blood on the floor under her head, which hung down through the head of the bed (the slats having given way) to within six inches of the floor.
The murderer had made his escape through a window on the lower floor, leading bloody marks in different places.
Naturally the excitement was intense, and under this stimulus Ansel L. Robinson was ar- rested for the crime, though it does not appear that there was at that time, nor at an}- subse- quent time, sufficient evidence to cause his arrest. Robinson was from Cincinnati, where
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