{"id":105232,"date":"2025-11-17T08:53:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T13:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/?p=105232"},"modified":"2025-11-18T09:58:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T14:58:29","slug":"a-death-in-november-the-fate-of-mary-potter-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/a-death-in-november-the-fate-of-mary-potter-part-1.html","title":{"rendered":"A Death in November: The Fate of Mary Potter (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Illustration:
Illustration: a revolver (the author had a firearms expert confirm the period authenticity of this AI-driven illustration). Credit: James Pylant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pennsylvania\u2019s Franklin County, on the commonwealth\u2019s central southern border, was home to just under 60,000 people in 1910. One of these residents, 44-year-old John W. Hardsock<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

(Note: Records show his surname interchangeably as Hartzook and Hardsock, with the latter appearing to be the family\u2019s preference.)<\/p>\n

A physician attended to him until late August, when Hardsock died from \u201ca complication of diseases,\u201d or what his death certificate called acute paralysis. (1) \u201cHe had been a sufferer for a long time; death was not unexpected,\u201d stated his obituary. (2)<\/p>\n

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 \u201cnothing is advanced against her character.\u201d (4)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A little over five months after their first meeting, on 6 April 1918 \u2013 two weeks after her 14th birthday \u2013 they eloped to Hagerstown, Maryland, his birthplace.<\/p>\n

On September 18, he registered for the draft, with Mary named as \u201cnearest relative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Russell W. Potter, World War I Selective Service System draft registration cards: Pennsylvania. Draft Registrations 1917-1918. Credit: FamilySearch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Russell worked as a machinist, and they lived at his parents\u2019 house in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, before moving into their own home.<\/p>\n

On the afternoon of November 23, seven months and 17 days after Russell Potter and Mary Hardsock eloped, the child bride\u2019s blood-soaked body was found lying on the floor of their home, with a bullet hole in her heart.<\/p>\n

Suspicion immediately fell upon her husband.<\/p>\n

The story was covered in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), 26 November 1918, page 14<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This article reports:<\/p>\n

Waynesboro, Pa., Nov. 26. \u2013 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\u2019s jury. Potter is in jail awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cI\u2019m going to shoot you.\u201d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Russell\u2019s 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 \u2013 and without leaving a drop of blood along the way? He couldn\u2019t explain that, either.<\/p>\n

In 1878, historian I. H. McCauley<\/a> had noted that murder was a rare occurrence among inhabitants of the valley, citing only four homicide cases in over 92 years.<\/p>\n

Franklin County didn\u2019t take kindly to accused wife killers:<\/p>\n