News from Hamilton County, NY

Transcribed and Donated by Joanne Murray

Pension Matters (Andrew Jubin)
Utica Weekly Herald
29 Apr 1890

In the state hospital for the insane in this city is confined Andrew Jubin, who received injuries by the explosion of a shell before Petersburg, which caused the loss of his reason. He was a private in company F? 16th New York heavy artillery volunteers. He was confined in the asylum in 1866 and was adjudged a lunatic, and a committee was appointed in 1869. A pension of $72 per month was secured for him in 1877 trhu the efforts of George C. Carter, and the total amount paid to his committee up to date is $15,165.93. As he has no family, an order was made after the pension was secured that $6 per week should be paid to his father and mother, and since his father's death in 1885? that ammount has been paid to his mother. Jubin is hopelessly insane.
"Witch" in Asylum;
Family All Bedridden
Woman Exercised Uncanny Influence
Over Her Three Sons.
The Syracuse Herald
31 Mar 1916
donated by Cindy LaVallee
Gloversville. March 31.— John Bennett, aged, gaunt, helpless, husband of the mysterious woman who was known as the "Witch of the Adirondacks," lies ill with rheumatism in his isolated home at Hope, in wooded and mountainous Hamilton county. There, too, are three sons, George, 3O years, who has been in bed twelve years; Ward, 32, who has not risen from his pillow for fourteen years, and Hank, 30, who has been bedridden for ten years.
The mother of this unfortunate trio, Mrs. Sarah Bennett. 60 odd years old, is in the State asylum for the insane at Utica; she was committed by Judge Wank Talbot of this place in May 1914. While she dwelt in her lonely abode at Hope — so ill named for her and her family — she exercised uncanny influence over her three, sons.
Whether it was mesmerism or hypnotism — whatever was her power over them — they shrank and shivered before a glance from her gloomy, deepset eyes. She declared they were ill, that they must remain in bed, and there they stayed, year in and year out, their wills completely subservient to hers.
Their minds became weakened, their bodies atrophied from lack of exercise. They are really ill to-day, although the farmers whose homes are scattered thereabouts remember them as strapping youths. Frank, the youngest, is in the worst condition, paralysed from the waist down. His brothers have had their beds moved nearer his that they might help him a little. While their mother lived with them she kept them secluded, yet she gave them care; .the Humane society could not aid them; the authorities could not touch them. Their father earned a scanty living from the unwilling soil, but, it sufficed.
Old man Bennett was himself susceptible to his wife's strange influence, but when she sought to exercise her power on him he fled and hid in the woods. Dr. E. F. Hagadorn is attending Bennett, who is 78 years old. The doctor says Bennett's condition is not serious, but any change must be for the worse. The old man is greatly troubled about the future of "his boys," as he calls them. He has engaged a farm hand to do the work about the little place. Dr. Hagadorn says, too, that, the three Bennett "boys" suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart and that the most expert treatment could not restore to the muscles of their legs the power of locomotion, the muscles having been disused too long.
Strangely enough, all the Bennetts are intensely interested in the European war. They eagerly read the war news in papers weeks old. Old Bennett used to shun strangers. Now It Is not unusual for auto tourists to visit him. He is surly to them, but invariably asks the question:
"How goes the war; who's winnlng?"