October 2026

For more than a century, his name has been whispered in Sullivan County alongside the legend of the “hidden woman in the wall” — a tabloid caricature of a dirty, eccentric old lawyer who kept a love slave locked inside his Court Square office. But the primary-source archives, the court records, and the fraternal ledgers tell a vastly different story. They reveal a man of intense civic devotion, a dedicated Mason, and a severely injured, grieving father who found, in his final and painful years, a quiet sanctuary of mutual care.

Working the identification through the Genealogical Proof Standard, this page tests the evidence: she registered in 1924 and again in 1925, 1926, and 1928, and the registers record her ballot as delivered and voted in each of the three register elections for which Manhattan voting records are publicly available.