November 17, 2025
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant begins a true-crime story from November 1918, once again showing that some family history has a dark side. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Pennsylvania’s Franklin County, on the commonwealth’s central southern border, was home to just under 60,000 people in 1910. One of these residents, 44-year-old John W. Hardsock, supported his family by toiling on the sand bank. When the census enumerator visited the family on the last day of April, John had been ill the entire month.
(Note: Records show his surname interchangeably as Hartzook and Hardsock, with the latter appearing to be the family’s preference.)
A physician attended to him until late August, when Hardsock died from “a complication of diseases,” or what his death certificate called acute paralysis. (1) “He had been a sufferer for a long time; death was not unexpected,” stated his obituary. (2)
His wife of 25 years, Emma West Hardsock, had given birth to ten children, five dying before her widowhood. Four children were then still at home, including four-year-old Mary, born on 22 March 1904. (3) Little is known of her childhood, only that she attended the Mennonite church and Sunday school and that “nothing is advanced against her character.” (4)
It was the evening of Halloween 1917 that 13-year-old Mary, in costume, first met Russell W. Potter at the Arcade, a five-and-ten-cent store. He was 19.
A little over five months after their first meeting, on 6 April 1918 – two weeks after her 14th birthday – they eloped to Hagerstown, Maryland, his birthplace.
On September 18, he registered for the draft, with Mary named as “nearest relative.”
Russell worked as a machinist, and they lived at his parents’ house in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, before moving into their own home.
On the afternoon of November 23, seven months and 17 days after Russell Potter and Mary Hardsock eloped, the child bride’s blood-soaked body was found lying on the floor of their home, with a bullet hole in her heart.
Suspicion immediately fell upon her husband.
The story was covered in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
This article reports:
Waynesboro, Pa., Nov. 26. – That Mary Theyma Potter, the young wife of Russell Potter, whose dead body was found on the floor of her parlor with a bullet hole thru her heart, came to her death at the hands of her husband, was the prompt finding of a coroner’s jury. Potter is in jail awaiting trial.
At the inquest Potter protested his innocence and told a circumstantial story of how his wife had taken the revolver from a nail where they kept it hanging, and began brandishing it in cowboy style, saying, “I’m going to shoot you.” He at first supposed she was only jesting, but soon she leveled the pistol at him, he said. He stooped quickly, the pistol was discharged, his wife rushed into the parlor and fell over. He could not explain how the pistol got into the pantry, where it was found later by a neighbor, or how his wife had made her way into the parlor, thirty-five feet away, before she fell.
Russell’s explanation was problematic. If Mary had accidentally shot herself in the chest, how did she manage to run the more than 30-foot distance from the pantry to the parlor – and without leaving a drop of blood along the way? He couldn’t explain that, either.
In 1878, historian I. H. McCauley had noted that murder was a rare occurrence among inhabitants of the valley, citing only four homicide cases in over 92 years.
Franklin County didn’t take kindly to accused wife killers:
- In March 1785, Josiah Ramage was charged with having killed his wife by striking her on the head with a pair of fire tongs. The Supreme Executive Council ordered his execution by hanging a year after taking his wife’s life.
- In November 1807, John McKean was convicted of murdering his wife. He was executed the following month.
- In March 1918 – a month before the Potters eloped – John H. Monn fired a fatal shot at his wife with a double-barreled shotgun before turning the weapon on himself. But he recovered and was tried and convicted of murder. Monn was given a 12-to-15-year prison sentence, escaping a seat in the electric chair by showing that his rash act was motivated by his wife’s “improper relations with other men.”
How would Russell Potter fare in Franklin County?
Find the answer in tomorrow’s article.
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Note on the header image: “Investigating a Mystery.” Designed by Freepik (www.freepik.com)
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(1) John W. Hardsock death certificate, no. 189043 (1910), “Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906–1972,” online database with images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 27 October 2025).
(2) John W. Hardsock obituary, Public Opinion (Chambersburg, PA), 1 September 1910, p. 1.
(3) Mary Nahoma Potter death certificate, no. 173897 (1918), “Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906–1972,” online database with images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 27 October 2025).
(4) “Young Husband Is Charged with Murder of Wife,” People’s Register (Chambersburg, PA), 28 November 1918, pp. 1, 5.