Vanished: Part three
Photo courtesy of Linda Stanley
Clara Berkley Lane, Harry’s wife
Photo by A. Parker Burroughs
This old stone bridge over a creek is along Zediker Station Road on what was once the Lane family’s farm.
The story so far: Harry Lane’s blood filled hat is discovered the day after he fails to reach home in South Strabane Township. All indications are that he has been murdered, and an extensive search for his body begins. A neighboring farmer becomes a suspect.
Eight days after she learned her husband was missing and quite possibly murdered, Clara Lane arrived at the Baltimore & Ohio station on South Main Street in Washington, accompanied by a number of friends and relatives, including her two oldest brothers, Clayton and Norman Berkley, from Illinois. While they waited for the 6:22 p.m. train to take them and their sister to their parents’ home in Lanark, Ill., one of the brothers was interviewed by the Daily Reporter.
“He stated that his sister seemed to be more rational on Tuesday than for several days and was of the belief that a change of scenes and associations would restore her to her normal mental condition,” the newspaper reported.
“He stated it was not until Wednesday of last week that he learned of the sad affair and that he and his brother started for Pennsylvania as soon afterward as possible.
“Mrs. Lane is an intelligent appearing lady and during her brief stay here on Tuesday much sympathy was shown for her by those who were aware of her presence.”
Clara Berkley and Harry Lane were married in Carroll County, Ill., in February 1891. Why Harry was in Illinois and how they met is not known, but it’s likely that their churches had something to do with it.
The Lanes attended the German Baptist (or Dunkard) Church in West Bethlehem Township. The German Baptist Brethren grew out of the Anabaptist movement, and the Berkleys, who had moved from Somerset, Pa., to Illinois shortly before Clara was born, were also followers of that denomination. In his history of Washington County, Boyd Crumrine noted that one of the earlier ministers of the Lanes’ church had moved to Illinois, and his successor, the Rev. John Wise, minister for 40 years, also moved to Illinois.
It is possible that Clara’s and Harry’s congregations were somehow connected enough to bring them together. That might also explain why Clara’s sister Maggie was married in 1888 to Samuel Bail, a neighbor of the Lanes and also a member of the Dunkard church. Bail was known to dress in traditional Brethren garb, similar to that of the Amish.
Zeroing in on Zediker
On Monday, June 26, more than two weeks after Harry Lane’s disappearance, nearly 800 men searched through South Strabane Township for his body.
“It is remarkable that at this time of year, when the farmers are busy at their work, so many of them should devote and entire day to this hunt…” wrote the Weekly Post of Pittsburgh. “There is no man in the neighborhood who does not firmly believe that Lane was killed and that his body lies secreted somewhere. The murder they accept as the basis for all their theorizing. From that one point almost every opinion diverges.”
The searchers were separated into parties that eventually converged on a large cornfield above John Zediker’s house at about 2 p.m. When no evidence of freshly turned earth was found in the field, some of the farmers asked county Detective William McBride if they could search the house. McBride gave his permission, even though he had already searched the place a week earlier.
The crowd started down the hill toward the farmhouse, and it was learned that Zediker had gone to Washington early in the morning and left word he would not be home that day. His absence was fortunate because some of that crowd was in the mood for instant justice.
The Weekly Post reported: “The other members of the family were at home, including Mrs. Zediker, who is a cousin of Robert J. Lane, a grown son, a daughter almost grown, and various sundry small Zedikers. They huddled timorously on the long porches and watched the several hundred brawny farmers, with their horses and dogs, tramping over their grounds, probing in their garden, poking in their springhouse, turning up the manure in the barnyard, looking under currant bushes and fallen grapevines, and in every active but inaudible way declaring that they believed the father of the family had killed Lane and hidden his body in or near his house, where it would neither be useful nor ornamental, especially in this warm weather.”
Six of the men went through the house and searched the cellar, and finally, after two hours, the parties moved on to the house of Thomas Zediker a quarter mile away, where another thorough search was conducted.
Doubts arise
It would be some time before the arrangements could be made with the pipeline company to empty its oil tank. In the meantime, McBride led search parties of a dozen or so volunteers to coal banks and ponds as far away as Amity over the next several weeks.
When so little came from all this effort, fortunetellers were consulted.
“A gentleman, interested in this search from the start, when asked what was being done by the searchers, said that a spiritualist medium had been consulted, who said the spirit of Harry Lane had not yet entered the spirit world,” the Washington Observer reported.
A day after Harry was reported missing, some boys had told a story of riding a freight train into Washington that night and seeing two men who had also jumped on the train. All got off in Washington, and the two men were heard talking about going on to Wheeling before running across Main Street in a suspicious manner, as if they did not want to be seen. Their story had little credence and was quickly forgotten. That incident resurfaced, however, a month after Harry’s disappearance, when one of the boys, after returning from Chicago, was interviewed by a reporter from the Washington Observer.
“One of these boys was Elzy Freeman, colored, son of Westley Freeman, of East Spruce alley,” the July 11 article stated. “Young Freeman has recently returned from Chicago. He states that he and his companions on the night that Harry Lane disappeared, boarded a B. & O. freight train at Wyland’s station shortly after the westbound express train which passes through Washington at 11:01 p.m. had gone by.
“At Smithville, three miles east of Zediker’s station, two men came up through a field where they had evidently been hiding and got on the same freight. They seemed to be excited about some event and conversed in a low tone, fragments of the conversation being heard by the boys. When Washington was reached the freight train stopped to switch some cars, and the two men jumped off and ran hurriedly across Main Street. The boys also got off there.
“A couple of days afterward Freeman boarded another freight train here with the intention of beating his way to Chicago. At Wheeling the same two men alluded to got on the freight train also. As before they acted suspiciously and seemed desirous of avoiding observation, more than usual with tramps stealing a ride.
“They and the boy reached Chicago together and that was the last Freeman saw of them.”
Freeman described one of the men as being tall with a pockmarked face, the other shorter and of a build similar to the missing man, but with a mustache. Harry was clean-shaven.
Harry Lane’s friends and family and the investigators had all been convinced that the young man had been murdered. No one who knew him could believe that he could be so dastardly as to abandon all who loved him, or that he had any reason in the world to do so.
The searches would go on, but with fewer volunteers and less enthusiasm. Doubt began to weaken the certainty so widely shared. The question on everyone’s lips weeks earlier was, “Who killed Harry?” Now, another question being asked was, “If he’s still alive, where did he go, and why did he leave?”
Next: The mystery solved